You can find all-tube MC phonos which can handle LOMC without any kind of SUT or SS front end, just pure tubes, from China. Look at AliExpress. I bought a specific unit the Lite Audio LS26 which was a little under $400. Supposedly it's clone of an old brand name like CAT or Marantz with a high-gain tube section graphed on Frankenstein style. It had enough gain for my TA Zeus LOMC...but it was very noisy and picked up microphonics like crazy. I had put weights on the top case, Herbie tube rings and rubber footers under the chassis to get that under control. I also had to keep it well away from other electronics or it might pick up a hum. It worked though. I ended up just getting a SUT (Hashimoto 20x built by someone on eBay) because the noise level was a little too much. There's a bunch more like this on AliExpress, just search for phono preamplifier and you'll find them.
