which budget preamp?

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.

hi and thank you for your input. my problem here really is tube or no tube.
i'd like a new mm stage, but it could include mc as well, for 400 bucks. i've spoken with several "experts" and they all tell me different things. one expert told me he would never go with a tube phono stage as the inherent quality of vinyl already lends itself to warm and cozy so tubes just soften the sound too much. another expert told me that ss will bring the sound closer to that of a cd. neither one appeals to me. i was curious about the jolida but one dealer said they are difficult to acquire and even more difficult to deal with should there be a problem. i like the vincent pho8 because of the big power unit but no one in calgary has ever heard of vincent. i like the tubeboxll because it matches my other tt gear, but have been told totally opposite things about it.
finally i like the rega phono because according to everybody, its awesome.
i want big clean punchy smooth and deep, and just a little more from a system that already sounds great. i told my wife this thing is the last thing i buy for the stereo, so i can't mess it up.