Recommandation for 1:6 1:8 SUT under $5K?

lewm

something seems off, his cartridge is 0.4mv; 8 ohm coil

lowest is x factor of 4 (+12db). cartridge 0.4mv would get up to 1.6 mv, possibly a bit of loss, that’s still low

3rd option x factor 8 (+18db) .4mv  should be 3.2mv, should be no problem going into a typical MM Phono stage.

OP says x factor 10 and 13 are too much, he detects overload.

My AT440 MM cartridge has 5mv output, it never overloaded anything I plugged it into.

happily, the impedance is a separate face mounted control on that unit.

found another option that seems like it might be a good choice

https://sutherlandengineering.com/sutz-2/

Stereophile review, similar cartridge type

also in the Stereophile Review, this cost a lot less

https://www.loungeaudio.com/copla

continuous Adjustable Gain: 9 to 27dB 

Continuous Adjustable Input impedance: 300 to 40 ohms Output impedance: 1.5 ohms 

One rotary knob, gain goes up/impedance goes opposite direction, reduces

Elliot, the OP already owns and uses a phono stage (PH9) that develops 58db of phono gain.  He also owns an AR linestage L28SE that develops an additional 12.5db of gain. If he feeds those components with the output of that SUT set at +12db, those 1.6mV become ~5.3V, enough to overload many amplifiers and way more than needed to drive nearly any conventional amplifier to full output. (Most require 1V or less. A few require 1-2V.) Even without any SUT, the linestage will put out ~1.3V, if the phono stage is fed with the pure unadulterated 0.4V output of his cartridge, again more than enough most likely. I thought this was a settled issue. He reports overload with a 1:10 SUT already.  You seem to want him to buy both a SUT and a new phono stage.  That’s up to him. He has not reported back on whether he has tried the no SUT approach.

On line 7 of my post above, referring to the voltage output of the cartridge, I mistakenly wrote "0.4V". Shoulda written 0.4mV.