Is there any reason not to have tube phono stage ?

@atmasphere

Interesting, I hadn’t thought of that.  Though many (tube) phono stages have a load selection on the front panel, and thus have a ss input for such selection.  Could that be overloaded in the same way?  I am thinking of my Trumpet MC.  I have found that with or without a transimpedance head amp, I can run it “wide open” at 47 kohm and get no ticks or pops that aren’t on the record.  I have found that with certain cartridges though, it was possible to get the phono stage to clip in a more typical way if the gain was too high in the head amp.

 I am interested to hear your thoughts on this.

@oceanica The concern is RFI messing with the input of the phono section, possibly overloading it so you get ticks and pops as well as brightness. 

If a pre-preamp is used and it overloads the input of a phono section, the RFI isn't there so that's a different matter. 

All the load selection does is place a low value resistor across the input to the phono section- its in parallel with the cartridge so the cartridge has to drive it. But it detunes the resonance, thus killing the RFI. 

Hagerman is well aware of this problem so I'd be very surprised if their preamps had any troubles in this regard. 

I’m using a transimpedience phono to drop the noise floor of my highly transparent SS audio chain.

But to optimize my Koetsu Corralstone, I have to purchase a SUT and a voltage phono stage. Seems like a lot to spend on 1 cart of many. I’m hoping to someday obtain/afford a DS W3 to further drop the noise floor.