High Value Phono Stages

The best phono stages I have heard are the John Curl Vendetta but they are very hard to find - no one who has one (myself included) ever sells them. His Parasound Halo JC 3 is also excellent.  I have listened to a Herron in my system and you would be happy with that. I also use an on board unit in a Classe DR7 preamp but those are quite rare.   My third system uses a Conrad Johnson Premier 15 which is far from shabby too.

@wspohn   I also have a Classé DR-7.  I had used its preamp for my cartridges, but the Kleos was too noisy through it, so I added the Hegel. The Hegel sounded the same but with much less noise when I used a lot of gain on it.

Isn't the DR-7  a great preamp?  I compared it with the Threshold preamp that was available then, and the DR-7 blew it away sound wise, as well as having better features.  I love having the -10 dB/-5 dB switch, mute switch and reverse-stereo capabilities.  My selector switch is starting to have some noise/dropout problems, probably due to oxidation, but if I were to open it up and spray some Deoxit there, that would probably fix that.

Yes - if you spray and then run the controls back and forth it will clean them - I had to do that as well.  There probably aren't many DR7s out there - they  cost $4900 US new. and they still bring $2k or more used..

I also use Classe DR3 VHC bridged in the same system - they can put out 500 watts per channel. They didn't make many of those, either as they cost c. $3K.

PS - the bridged DR3 VHC was solid as a rock into a 1 ohm load so many were bought by owners of Apogee Scintillas which had a 1 ohm impedance (early production went as low as 1/4 ohm which would melt down many amps_

I would throw the Cyrus Phono Signature into the mix. Can be upgraded with the outboard power supply. Supports 4 inputs and even has a remote. I miss mine a lot.