Mainstream Phono Stages Incorporating Premium Branded PCB Parts - Do They Exist?

I used to frequent the store on rte 123. Vu is a nice guy. But his shtick (tube SE amps driving hyper-efficient electromagnetic speakers)and my shtick (OTLs with ESLs) are very different.

He used to have a Russian guy who built those custom SE amps.

Because the builds can be for a specific customer’s needs, there are some quite odd pieces out there, like a single chassis holding a phono stage and crossover.  This reminds me of an establishment in the M.A.S.H. novel: Finest Kind Pediatric Hospital and Whorehouse.

I have a custom built linestage by their Italian builder that has a transformer output that is intended to match with the transformer inputs on my amp which is a copy of a Western Electric 133 amp; my amp has original Western Electric input and output transformers.  Many of the other parts are vintage as well.  The big challenge with this sort of build is finding matching parts, particularly because the only way to know that a part is good is to try it in-circuit.

Great design and tightly tolerance parts are the key to higher performance.

One afternoon at DeJaVu Audio, I listened to a pair of Audio Note speakers, I think their model E, if that makes sense, being driven first by an AN Kegon amplifier (for sale then at ~$125K) and then by the AN Ongaku (probably around $80K). This was at least 20 years ago, so maybe prices are higher now if those amplifiers are still in production. Anyway, they both sounded very good, but there was a distinct difference between them having to do with tonal balance. I cannot recall exactly how they differed in their presentation of music on a speaker presumably designed to accommodate both, but my thought was if there is such a thing as "perfection", ought these two amplifiers to be nearly identical in sound quality? Anyway, if expensive parts per se are the way to Nirvana, surely AN products ought to be on the way.

The Link will also show one more modern take on a Boutique Component.

I myself have similar plans for a particular component to be used on my Pre Amp Build, one just can't get enough ideas from one source about where to utilise Panzerholz.

The ever growing band of advocates is marching on.

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/reviews/reality-quest-going-to-extremes-with-the-taiko-audio-sgm-extreme-part-2-of-5-r908/