I've heard the McCormick preamp, it did not sound good in my system. I like a buffered pre-amp. See the Pass Labs website. You can make your own
Why a line preamp?
It's been my understanding that the best component is a straight wire. Further, before the the advent of the phono a preamp was not required. All that was needed was a volume control. Now with the reduced usage of the phono we find we must have the line stage preamp. Where's the straight wire philosphy? Why do we need anything more than a volume control and selector switch? Today I connected my McIntosh tuner directly into my amp since the tuner does have a volume control. It sounded better.