Phono Stage

I have a Moon 810LP and highly recommend it. There is nothing that I could ask for to improve the sound, and I use it with my Rega Planar 10 with Apheta 3. You could probably find one used for around $6k broken in. Mine sounded totally amazing after 200+ hours of break in.  It is highly rated as a reference piece and even bought as new a great value.

Long story as to why, but ended up buying the Gold Note PH10. Short story is the used Sutherland fell through, no used Moon’s, & stumbled upon this lightly used PH10 at a price too good to pass on. A lot of you love yours, it is the PERFECT form factor, so thought I would give it a try.
Arrives on Monday. Thank you for all the outstanding advice. 

Sweet! Once you receive it make sure you reach out to the importer let them know the serial number and get the latest software update. Enjoy. 

@signaforce congrats on your purchase! This phono stage should take your vinyl playback up several notches. PH-10 has a good range of loading options 10Ω, 22Ω, 47Ω, 100Ω, 220Ω, 470Ω, 1000Ω, 22kΩ, 47kΩ

With ML that has a slightly polite top end I would suggest experimenting with 220, 470 and 1000. I was loading mine at 1000ohm and it opened up nicely with my Whest phono stage. 100 was dull, 470 was pretty good. Test different settings and take time evaluating each. Don’t rush as the difference takes a while to adopt to. 

"Yeah and the Rhea also has 10 tubes. Re-tubing it will put you out of $700-$1000 easily."  Really? $70 to $100 per tube? I am sure you can replace tubes for less than that.  The Rhea and its cousins from Aesthetix are very good sounding but do tend to exhibit electronic noise when pushed too hard.  It seemed to be the nature of the beast when I owned one, and expensive tubes do not cure that problem since it is inherent to the circuit.

As to the issue of signal and noise.  There are two sources of noise, the electronics and the medium, in this case vinyl. You want the signal to noise ratio of a phono system’s electronics to be at or below ideally the optimal low noise inherent to vinyl, which is around 60 to 70db below signal, at best. Guys who build their own stuff are always talking about having too much gain and wanting to build their equipment such that the gain is as close as possible to what the system needs to produce the SPLs that satisfy them, so they can get away with very little attenuation. I understand the idea but my experience is to the contrary; I would rather spend money on the best possible attenuator and have an excess of gain in my phono stage. To me that sounds quietest when achieved.