which budget preamp?

dude....I'd help you if I could, but i don't know shit about phono pre amps....I just hated to see you get blanked on a Friday night....Best wishes from Lake Tahoe, CA,

Are you thinking new or used? Used of course has the advantage of letting you try it out and being able to sell for close to what you paid. Used preamps that I have tried and liked around under $400 cad are the Vincent PHO-8, Musical Fidelity V-LPS and Dynavector P75 MkI. I plan on getting a Dynavector cart so settled on it. One of these days I will get around to listing the others for sale...

But generally speaking, are you looking for MM only or MM/MC? Preferences for tubes or solid state?

Just pick one. You probably already know from all of your research which one you want to pull the trigger on, No?

Jolida JD-9. New just outside of your price range, used probably just within.

PLEASE SEE my fairly comprehensive answer and suggestions (just completed!) in response to "Phono pre-amp" [from] 'Pmp', also in this grouping of posts. These two inquiries ask essentially the same question, as it happens. I might add, however, that the Jolida JD-9 suggestion looks to be a good one. I recall a review that made a very emphatic point that replacing the stock tubes with much pricier vintage "classic" 12AX7's made a world of difference with this design; so you'd probably have to budget for those, as well. I'd expect that an investment in upgraded coupling caps would be worthwhile [a speculation, since I have not seen the Jolida] -- say, Russian K40Y on the cheap, if suitable values are available (possibly in conjunction with the familiar Orange Drop polypropylenes in another location, just to avoid stacking colorations -- experimenting advised), or Dynamicaps (see Michael Elliot's [Counterpoint's designer] strong endorsement at his Altavista site. There are the familiar Hovlands and Auricaps, and many others, as well. Don't mess with the EQ caps for the RIAA compensation, though; unless you can pull off tight matching of values and tolerances (not trivial), and come into some extra loot. Good luck.