I have long been spending my money on commercial high end equipment.  in the late 80s (when i was broke) I designed and built solid state pre and power amps loosely derived from an article in an Electronics journal.  I used them for some years until my flat was burgled and they took the pre-amp along with my turntable.  I replaced the solid state pre with a Croft super micro valve/tube pre and immediately loved it, but it couldn’t drive ancilliaries.  Later I purchased a 2nd hand Audio Research SP9 which stood me in good stead for about 15 years.  I also ran an Audiomeca Romeo Romance TT/arm with and AT ART1 cartridge during this time.
However I always had some small missgivings about the sound…  that initially I blamed on the arm and/or cartridge as misstracking… So I built my own turntable based on a Scheu plater, bearing and motor.  Still I was not fully satisfied, although I had a large improvement in resolution. So I did a little research (read lots and lots) on some of the crazy high end guys on the web, and I decided to have a go at my own pre-amp to replace the SP9.  Much to my surprise it was a huge improvement and the “misstracking” (read as evil feedback) was gone. On the following pages are some details about the design and the surrounding system.