i must admit that my focus on phono preamp was pretty poor until recently. I started with the phono stepup built into my sansui for years then when i moved to a yamaha i brought a cheap battery powered stepup from radioshack for my mm shure cartridge. Once i purchased my first mc, i recognized i could not use the ratshack stepup and purchased a rotel 970. That lasted several years and i purchased a vandersteen ol1 that i used in combination with the rotel with what i thought was good success until a friend loaned his jolida tube phono. I was very surprised at the impact and started looking for a replacement. I had started using the zyx cartridges and finally picked up the artisan by zyx. I use it with my Airy3s and UNIverse cartridges. Very pleased with the results.
