Conrad JOHNSON Phono Preamps

C-J makes wonderful stuff including/especially phono preamps.  I currently own their top TEA1series3, but before that had a TEA2, and before that a ET3 and before that...well you get the idea.  Nobody ever got hurt buying C-J.  They are competitive at every price point, usually best in class.  I believe you could have your ET3 modified at the factory to have the phono stage built in probably at a cost savings as compared to buying a stand-alone unit.

Hi Jeff,
This is way off topic, but briefly my system as it relates to C-J is GAT2, TEA1iii, ART150, all of these powered by a PS Audio P20 power conditioner.  To  your question of noise, the TEA1 is quiet competitive with the best solid state, the TEA2max had some noise more typical of vacuum tube electronics.  This is in my primary home in Florida.  We have two older homes in New England with older less exotic systems and I can tell you I would be thrilled to have an ET3 in either or both of those.  There is nothing second rate about an ET3.

I have a lot of cartridges.  The best of my better MC cartridges has been an Ortofon Per Winfeld, but I have more recently been happier with the sound of a SoundSmith Experion, which is a MI, based on the older Bang & Olufson design, which in turn is based on an old Grado design.  Anyway the Experion is sublime.  I have two turntables in this system, a VPI HW40, and a Technics SL1200GAE sitting side by side.  I usually have the SL1200 set up for Mono and the HW40 for Stereo.  I listen to a lot of old jazz and so need both, back and forth all the time.  Speakers are Sony SS-AR2.

There is a host of other stuff, cables, rcm, digital stuff, SUT and on and on.  My grandmother got me started in this hobby, I am 72 years old now and have records in my collection acquired when I was 11 or 12 years old.  A lot of stuff.
Before I bought the GAT2, I had an ET5 and it was indeed hard on tube, singular it only had one.  The GAT2 seems to have solved that problem.  I believe the high gain, combined with using one tube for both channels was asking too much of one tube in the ET55.  Anyway, it sounded marvelous until it got noisy, about every 6 months for me, but I play my system 2-4 or more hours every day.  The ET3 doesn't make the same demand on the tubes.  It is really a great design.

Enjoy the adventure. It will not be ugly.

East Coast.  West Palm Beach.  Have fun.  Let me know if I can help you at any time.
Bill

Hi Jeff,
Re-issue mono records will play on stereo just fine, although a true mono cartridge still sounds quieter.  KAB makes a mono switch that is not expensive that would do the job too.

As for a place to start: Time-Life offered a series on vinyl entitled the Giants of Jazz. There were 28 volumes in the series, each volume comprised of 3 records and included an excellent booklet written by a recognized music scholar.  Each volume featured one artist, and of course each artist was accompanied by important sidemen of the day.  This series is a great place to start because it was widely distributed and copies are easy to find and usually very reasonably priced.  The quality is audiophile grade too.  Look at Amazon and Ebay to begin your search.  This series will take you from the early roots of jazz up to the beginnings of Bebop. 

Bebop and an off spring of it usually known as Cool Jazz or West Coast Jazz started about the middle of WWII and lasted well into the 1960s.  After that came Fusion or Jazz-Rock, which I am sure you can intuit on you own.  If you want to skip ahead just to get the flavor of this stuff, for Bebop pick up an Dizzy Gillespie/Charlie Parker record, or pick up a Johnny Costa CD.  Johnny was the pianist for the Mr. Rogers show and he played Bebop that sounded so much like Art Tatum that even Art Tatum himself was fooled.  Not many people know this, btw, but Charlie Parker was playing Art Tatum riffs.  For the West Coast sound, either Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Five, or one of the Peanuts cartoon character records like Charlie Brown's Christmas, the music was all written by Vince Guaraldi and is West Coast jazz to admire.  For Jazz-Rock, start with the man who invented it Miles Davis and get Bitches Brew.  Follow that up with Weather Report's Heavy Weather.

But get grounded with early jazz first then get back to me.   At any time, if you need a break from your jazz lessons listen to some Bob Dylan, who just might be the best blues lyricist ever.  There are many great black singers.  Someone might tell you that Robert Johnson was the best blues entertainer ever.  Forget that.  Besse Smith was the best ever, male or female.  This might seem unrelated, but once you get yourself saturated in the roots of jazz you will find that it all comes from the blues.  So, don't get all uppity about what kind of music should be labeled jazz.  Duke Ellington didn't even like the word jazz.  His autobiography was entitled "Music Is My Mistress."
You are in for a great adventure.

Bill