Best SUT For Van Den Hul Crimson Stradivarius cartridge

Kanchi my friend-you are drowning in high-priced shots in the dark that don't mate well. Imagine trying to decorate your own living room with a mix of post-modern, Danish, Queen Ann, and Victorian furniture, all bought blind because you thought you were getting nicely built stuff at a good price. Your domicile in Appallachia does not help (that is a joke-I love Louisville to your south). I gave you some names to call. You need ONE person who knows his stuff to guide you through the morass and integrate your system to something that is coherent and compatible. Personally, I would ditch the Cary gear, stay away from SUT's, and buy better cabling. Then get Brian Walsh over to make sure TT set-up is optimum. 

You have great equipment. My advice:

I cannot tell you how many times I have been reminded: KISS, keep it simple stupid. I suggest you simply solve your signal strength issue, change nothing else now.

Your original post was straightforward, and you already knew that wonderful cartridge's .95mv output is a difficult middle ground.  that is the ONLY problem.

You started asking about x factor of 5. That is the simple solution, KISS, pick a SUT with 5 or 6 X factor, keep your existing Phono Stage. 

SUT's do not change the sound, they are not powered, they get MC signal 'proper' (strength and impedance) for MM input of a Phono Stage which you already have.

Optional loading regarding impedance separate from x factor is a wonderful thing, probably more important for your cartridge.

I found one with future flexibility, 4 optional impedance settings (1 specific setting mathematically 'correct' for 'this' cartridge), and 3 other optional/future options, and 3 inputs, and importantly: PASS for MM (or high output MC). All front selections, no rear ..., no dip switches, IOW, flexibly simple!

I just added a 3rd tonearm, now MC; MM; Mono. balanced, ready to go. A simple switch on the face of the SUT, off to a single MM Phono Stage.

I retain the wonderful sound of my McIntosh preamp's phono stage for all 3 arms.

Nirvana

Hey I'm late to the game on this one but I have a customer who was using a Lyra Etna (0.56mv) with a 1:20 into his VPS100.  He wanted a bit more system gain so he went for a 1:40 and things went south quickly.  The highs got ragged and the sound brash and he thought the SUT was broken.  Since there is not much you can do to "break" a SUT I met up with him and put the setup on the test bench.  A 1kHz sine wave was fin in both setups but moving up to 10kHz showed what was happening.  The 10Khz into the 1:20 showed a slight increase of higher harmonics and moving to the 1:40 showed a dramatic increase which nicely coincided with what he was hearing.  

All phono stages distort at frequencies first and the onset of this distortion tends to be rather abrupt.  The nature of it is quite dissonant and it gradually shows up on dynamic peaks of hot recordings so it is elusive to track down.  I find that the current trend of high output (0.5mV-1mV+) cartridges and the typical high ratio SUT's do not play well together and a 1:26 into your VPS 100 is not a good combination.  This is not an issue with the SUT of the phono, it is an issue pairing the two with a cartridge with 1mV output.  Feed it with a cartridge with a 0.25mV output and it would be a beautiful combination.

dave

I heard magic today!!
I set up Ikeda Kai with MC26L, VPS100 and used smartractor and Analogmagik to setup the cartridge.
It was pure magic.
The best setup I heard so far!! (my sound memory is not that great!!)
I would like to thank @fsonicsmith for letting me listen to his system which encouraged me to go for that magic. I had listened to a 1000K Greg Beron system 1 yr ago. 
Analogmagik really helped me to setup accurately.
I used my DIY Cables using helix geometry (I compared mine to high priced cables three different brands in total in 5-20K range), I don't want to reveal names and step on anyone's toes.
I made DIY sound absorbers and diffusers.
I leaned so many things in the last 3 yrs from all your help in the forums, articles, etc.
My VanDen Hul crimson is in for tuneup and I will report once it returns in a few weeks.

Great news that you found the magic.  The Kai with its 0.19mV output is a good match for your particular SUT / Phono combo.  In order to hear the VDH in a similar situation you would need to use it with something like a 1:5 ratio SUT.  The sound you had with the VDH and the 1:26 was simply the phono stage being overloaded at the input and is not the sound of the cartridge.

dave