"I'm all set to buy my first turntable (Music Hall MMF-5 with Goldring cart.) but am getting stuck on the phono stage. Seems like the Bottlehead Foreplay keeps coming up on the lists of recommended tube phono pre's for my budget, but even that's a little pricey.

Any other recommendations? A tube-rectified power supply would be nice to have, too  I know, I'm picky..."


The Foreplay kit? Or a Foreplay homebrew clone?
I know schematics for Foreplay don't float around on the net.

Maybe just rip off a schematic of a phono stage that is interesting.
(Allen Wright?) from Australia has some nice schematics for phono stages.

The Aikido circuit can be used for a phono stage, just hang the RIAA EQ circuit off the back. (I think Broskie has a schematic for a phono stage with regards to the Aikido circuit.)

There is probably quite a few phono stage circuits to chose from.

Is the Goldring cart a moving magnet, or a moving coil cartridge?

A tube rectified power supply can be built rather easy, figure your target voltage needed for linestages/pre-amp/phono stages. Source the parts, and go for it.
Using a choke in the power supply is nice. You can use the same power supply to try various phono stage topologies.

My turntable knowledge is pretty worthless......I'd love to get a TT, and the Music Hall offerings are excellent for bang for the buck.
But this place is too useless to deal with a turntable.

I still collect records however.....don't have many, but they are interesting.

The URL escapes me at the moment...but I'm sure a Google search will get you the correct site

The guy who designed it sells the unfinished PCB for 90 bucks or so...pretty good deal.