Anyone have experience with the PH-1000 and tube stage

The Steelhead has only a White cathode follower as its linestage. It adds no gain above that which comes from the phono section.  The volume control knob lies within the linestage topology. The linestage circuit allows you to use the Steelhead as a stand alone full function preamp, via the volume control knob plus only one AUX or hi-level pair of inputs that also feeds the WCF linestage, selectable from the front panel.  The Steelhead has 3 pairs of phono inputs, one for MM and two for MC gain, but you can actually configure even the MM inputs for MC gain levels. I looked up the Chinook.  It is apparently a phono only stage. So upgrading it would be even simpler than what I wrote about the Steelhead.  For fun, you might want to open up the Chinook and see if it has large white output coupling caps, 30uF in value.  If so, its circuit is likely to be like that of the Steelhead.  That 30uF capacitor is not only way more capacitance than you would ever need for interstage coupling but also the capacitor used is of very mediocre quality, and I am pulling my punches when I use those words. Whatever linestage you are feeding with your Chinook is likely to have an input impedance of 50K ohms or higher.  That means a 2uF coupling capacitor would be sufficient to give you bass down to ~2Hz, dead flat at 20Hz. Upstream is that 47R resistor in series with the signal path, that is also unnecessary, and I simply bypassed them in my unit, rather than to remove them entirely. If you do any of this, check the input impedance of your linestage high level inputs, to be sure the impedance is at least 50K ohms before selecting a 2uF replacement. But even if its only 20K ohms, which is imaginable for a SS device, then a 5uF capacitor will give you the same result.

sounds like you need to find a solution/location/loose on top/pull out shelf/lazy susan, to make access to the back of your unit less of a PITA.

Thanks both.  No inclination to retire my Chinook.  Alternatives to PH1000/1012 combo there are 2 I am considering : Allnic 7000V and the much less expensive Lab12 Melto2.   Anybody have one of these?  

Lewn

I believe I have a solution.  I ordered a resistor switch box which will cover the loads I need for my 4 cartridges, without having to open the Chinook.  But the really  low output MC require the highest gain on the SE which is 65 dB.  If I use an sut I would have to go down to 45 or 50 - requires opening the box.  My Soundsmiths don’t like the SUT.  At 65 dB I get some hiss (not terrible) from the Chinook (tubes are being driven hard).  Having done more research on the Steelhead I now think it might be the best fit for me.  It’s way different inside than the Chinook and a lot quieter.  I’d that your experience?  How “tubey” is it?  The Chinook is a little warm but not big lush tubes.  There’s a FET stage before the tubes.  I don’t care about the line stage so I guess I don’t need the mods you did.  Thoughts?

My guess is that the Steelhead uses a hybrid cascode at its phono inputs with the FET at the bottom and 6922 at the top. That’s one way to get a lot of gain. The RIAA filtering would follow that gain stage, but I don’t know how they (apparently) employ autoformers in the MC pathway. Like I said, the schematic is unavailable. As to the Chinook, have you removed the cover in order to examine the output coupling caps? And are they 30uF in value? If yes, then I’d guess the output stage of the phono only Chinook is like that of the Steelhead phono stage. After all, the Steelhead came first, and I suspect the Chinook was their effort to produce a lower cost phono only version.