What whart said, "...for some reason, I couldn’t get it to open up-- there was a slight electronic glaze to the sound that made it very hi-fi." The haze goes away with better coupling capacitors and getting rid of the 47 ohm resistors in the signal path. Manley uses this topology, because they have to build fool-proof units, never knowing just how many feet of cable or what impedance their product might be asked to drive. For any knowledgeable audiophile, with an intelligently put together system, the 47 ohm resistors and the 30uF of capacitance at both the phono stage and linestage outputs is simply crazy overkill.
One reason to "upgrade" is if you want to convert to balanced mode for your phono reproduction, as would be the case if you went for the Sim Audio phono stage recommended by Raul. In the one of my two systems where I use the Steelhead, it is driving Beveridge amplifiers which are single-ended all the way. So there would be not much to gain by using a balanced preamplifier. (I did think about installing transformers at the inputs of the Bev amplifiers, so they can be driven balanced.) In my other system, it is balanced all the way.