Phase inverting problem

Lacee- I'm not able to answer your technical question about whether the
number of stages causes some sort of phase inversion, but I can tell you,
based on my experience running a Steelhead for a number of years that:
1. It sounds better if power is always on to the power supply and you are
simply switching off the active circuits using the standby switch on the main
unit;
2. I preferred the sound of the unit through a separate active line stage,
rather than running it with its own buffered volume control. Whether that's
directly comparable to what you are doing by running the Steelhead fixed
outputs into a passive line stage, I dunno, but I offer it for what it's worth.
The unit sounded very 'clear' but a bit threadbare running it on its own
(without the addition of the separate line stage, which added more meat to
the bones-
call it 'warmth,' 'richness' or 'euphonic coloration,' it had a less 'forced' more
relaxed sound). At the time i was running a Lamm L2 which may have been
very complementary to the Steelhead, b/c the Lamm had a very lucid, if
somewhat 'dark' sound and rolled off a bit at the frequency extremes.
3. Using Lyra Titan i and later Airtight PC1, I preferred the sound through
the MM inputs run at 47k. The MC inputs sounded uneven across the
spectrum. I did fiddle with the loading and other settings, but that's where I
came out.
4. I think the gain setting on the unit was at 55.
5. I found that tube rolling made a pretty significant difference- my
preference being the NOS Tele equivalents and running other NOS for the
7044 slots. On that note, it may be worth changing out the tubes to see
what difference it makes.
I did a fair amount of fooling around with the unit when I owned it- and I
think that summarizes where I came out.

Lacee, if you are running a preamp already you certainly don't need the passive volume control after it. I would have to imagine that is messing with your bass!

Check the setup and loading on the cartridge. Absolute phase won't make the system should thin: something else is up.

I see a black ground wire going in the bottom of the tonearm, but I don't know where it is connected to.

The black wire is connected to the aluminum arm wand by the screw that hold the arm wand into the pivot assembly. At the arm board PCB it is connected to the green tonearm wire, the ground return of the red interconnect as well as the ground wire. The blue wire is only connected to the ground return of the white interconnect and nothing else.

I hope this helps. If needed I can upload a photo of the arm board to my system page. Let me know.

I sort of figured things out.
Reading past reviews, all seemed to say that running the Steelhead in the fixed output mode into a pre amp( LSA in my case)would be better sounding, so using it as a phono stage minus the volume control is what I've settled for also.
I was running it the other way, because you can't access the mono feature in fixed mode, and I occasionally listen to mono recordings.

Also, running the cartridge(Clearaudio Talisman V2 gold)thru MM stage and not the transformers in MC also has sonic merits.Experimenting with loading, so far 100 ohm sounds good, less cartridge ringing.

So now I am quite happy,thanks for the input.

Also, running the cartridge(Clearaudio Talisman V2 gold)thru MM stage and not the transformers in MC also has sonic merits.Experimenting with loading, so far 100 ohm sounds good, less cartridge ringing.

I guarantee that the load had no effect on ringing! If you look at the inductance of the cartridge, you will see that it is so slight that the load could not possibly affect it at audio frequencies.

The reason it is making a difference has to do with the apparent fact that the Steelhead is sensitive to Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) at the input of the phono. The RFI is generated by the resonance of the inductance of the cartridge, in parallel with the capacitance of the cable- the two form a tuned RF circuit. The energy of the cartridge sets this circuit into resonance- and that is the source of your RFI. By adding the load, you are detuning the RF circuit so it can't resonate.