Mike,
My 2 cents is that it depends on whether you're running one two or three carts through the phono stage, how often you swap out carts requiring different loading/gain settings, and what tubes you have your hands on.
I loved my Rhea Signature for super sound, extremely friendly gain/loading changes on the fly specific to each of the three inputs.
The downside is you'll want to retube the Rhea, especially V1/V2 with an ultra-quiet matching quad. I did eat through a few sets of somewhat noisy tubes till i installed a Tele quad. Rhea is super easy to swap tubes with the chassis top plate secured by velcro.
If you're only running one or two carts, then the Nagra is a killer sounding phono for the money, especially used. Not as user friendly as the Rhea you need to swap loading cards by removing the top plate. It comes with one input with a second optional input slot for either MC or MM.
Jeff's review was right on IMO http://www.tonepublications.com/analogaholic/nagra-vps/
Very quiet and very small footprint.
If you start stretching your budget, two other slightly more expensive tube phonos I'd recommend auditioning are the Tron (awesome for extreme LOMC carts) and the Thoress (Mike L and Shodhan can expand on that unit).
Chris
My 2 cents is that it depends on whether you're running one two or three carts through the phono stage, how often you swap out carts requiring different loading/gain settings, and what tubes you have your hands on.
I loved my Rhea Signature for super sound, extremely friendly gain/loading changes on the fly specific to each of the three inputs.
The downside is you'll want to retube the Rhea, especially V1/V2 with an ultra-quiet matching quad. I did eat through a few sets of somewhat noisy tubes till i installed a Tele quad. Rhea is super easy to swap tubes with the chassis top plate secured by velcro.
If you're only running one or two carts, then the Nagra is a killer sounding phono for the money, especially used. Not as user friendly as the Rhea you need to swap loading cards by removing the top plate. It comes with one input with a second optional input slot for either MC or MM.
Jeff's review was right on IMO http://www.tonepublications.com/analogaholic/nagra-vps/
Very quiet and very small footprint.
If you start stretching your budget, two other slightly more expensive tube phonos I'd recommend auditioning are the Tron (awesome for extreme LOMC carts) and the Thoress (Mike L and Shodhan can expand on that unit).
Chris
