Dear Patrick: I'm the owner of severals: turntables, tonearms and phono cartridges.
My every day audio system has three TT : two Analog One MK2 from Acoustic Signature ( similar to your Acoustic Solid One. There are some tweaks to this TT ) ) and one Micro Seiki RX 5000, each TT with three tonearms. From your analog front end I own: the Ortofon RS 212 ( very hard to find ), the Shelter 901 and the Denon 103.
I can see that you are in love with tubes ( I don't want to argue about it. Maybe some other time ) and this kind of amplification always has some problems with an MC cartridges, one of these problem is the gain that is not always enough for low gain MC: the cartridges that you own are medium gain.Now, your Aesthetix is an out board phono stage ( I don't know if has a built-in stepup transformer for a low gain MC ), so you have at least two additionals stages between the very critical signal of the cartridge and your line preamp: interconect cables and RCA conectors, these additionals stages always degraded the signal, yes I know that you love the Aesthetix and that with it you have a better sound, but this is only because this phono stage is better that the phono stage inside the Rogue, as a mere of fact: at the end of this preamplification you really are hearing the Rogue and a small part of the Aesthetix. Imagine only for a moment: An Aesthetix line preamp with a high gain built in phono stage ( no step up transformer inside ), this will be ideal for you. What is my point: to look for this kind of preamp: maybe the CAT, Boulder, FM Acoustic, etc..., this will be a great analog up-grade that where you are now. Another step up will be to change your amp and here there are many choices.
BTW, I agree with you: timbre and tonality are the two most important parameters in an audio system.
Best regards and always enjoy the music.
Raul.
