phono stage / step up for Koetsu carts

What cartridge did you get?

Another thing: Regarding Step Up Transformers, there are opinions about this. Here is mine since I had to make the decision with my setup.

Compared to a mediocre phonoamp, a good transformer can often produce a seductive tonality--particularly a more pure midrange--on less-than-well-recorded music and they can be particularly "heavenly" with strings. However, based on listening to many, many recordings, I came to believe that SUTs achieve this heavenly sound by rolling off the highs and perhaps through other effects.

Obviously, my opinion depends on what music I like, particular recordings, the rest of my system and a limited sampling of the universe of possible options. My system is designed to reproduce symphonic works so I chose to go the active phonoamp route which is, unfortunately, ultimately more expensive.

I started out with a Tom Evans Microgroove+ with my first Koetsu. This had an excellent tonality to it but was somewhat noisy. Probably a Groove would be way better but I have never heard one.

After trying many phono front ends--Nagra, CJ, Manley, BAT, Air Tight, Aesthetix IO and many others--I got a Wavestream Kinetics phono amp and am highly satisfied.

As you may now be noticing, a good phonoamp (or SUT) is the "hidden" cost of a Koetsu.