best phono stage to mate with a London Decca Super Gold cart?

I run a Decca FFSS MkIV C4E (rebuilt by John Wright) and Garrott Brothers Gold (retipped by JW). I have been using Deccas since the late 70s. I now use a TRON Seven Reference phono stage, which was built specially for my Decca. Of course, this is way out of your budget. However, I have also tried the budget TRON Convergence tube phono stage (GBP900 = USD1300) with my Deccas. It gets maybe 90% of the SQ of my Seven Reference for a mere fraction of the cost. Graham Tricker builds his units to order, and so you can specify cartridge loading etc at the time of order.

Over the summer I built a K&K Audio "Trio" for one of Kevin's customers and was very impressed by its performance. It faired very well in comparison to Kevin's all out assault on the SOTA, the Sonus Veritas Venice, a fully balanced differential, transformer coupled unit reviewed here: http://http//www.positive-feedback.com/Issue59/sonus.htm

The Trio's sins were sins of omission, not commission (added colorations). I believe an assembled MM version can be had for ~$1.5K. The circuit board is arranged so different loading resistors can be easily inserted. The input capacitance of the input tube and the capacitance of your tonearm wiring should put you in the 220pF ballpark.

http://http//www.kandkaudio.com/trio-phono-stage/

http:// http://http//www.positive-feedback.com/Issue59/sonus.htm

Sorry for the screw-up.

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue59/sonus.htm

http://www.kandkaudio.com/trio-phono-stage/

Yeah John, the K & K looks very interesting (as does the budget TRON). ARJ, the input resistance is easily changed with the installation of a 15k to 22k resistor on the inside of the phono amp, on the input jacks.