Couple things, blame auto spelling for phone vs phono and bad eyes. Also, This is not the "reference". I never knew the difference and thought the reference had the two cartridge types but it is the other way around. On the "standard" you can support both moving magnet and moving coil; on the reference, only moving coil and the power supply seems lighter. But then again, many of these have probably been recapped, as mine should have been, and maybe people skimped on the caps before taking internal pictures. I use a high output moving coil. So on the "reference" they took out the moving magnet stage, switching, etc and charged more. A case of less is more? Or audiophile foolery? I do use decent cables for the phone stage (MIT) as I had RFI from a local FM station - nothing to do with the sound of them. No "sweet sounding, pure copper, etc, etc., just no "American Top 40."
I'm concerned about the other Krell equipment I have as the preamp is the same vintage. I need to open that up as well as see what is going on, if anything. That has not been powered on all that time.
As far as the components, what I can see are J309 JFETs and MPS8099 NPN and MPS8599 PNP transistors. A bunch of them. No opamps.
The KPE phone stage doesn't have balanced outputs and I always thought that was lame. The Krell preamp has balanced inputs. The preamp drives a DBX crossover (yes, weak link) and then into two amps; a Krell 160B for the lows and a Krell KSA-50S for the highs. Turntable is a TNT MKII with some upgrades. The cleaning people broke two needles over the years so I machined the white plastic cover of the cartridge. I was thinking of 3D printing something better lately. The amps are massive. The 160B runs class A bias all the time and heats up the room. The KSA-50S has a three step bias but between the two of them, no fireplace is needed.
I also use a TASCAM mastering two-channel R2R with Dolby SR noise reduction. That setup has claimed very high dynamic range, supposedly 2db or so higher than 16bit LPCM . But tapes are flaking off now and getting harder to find any that dont. I changed the capstan belt in the deck recently, you can't even see it with the covers off, but I got it working, lots of Band-Aids from sharp metal.
Parts should be here Friday, I'll open the preamp and post some pictures. Funny thing is, everything sounds great. Watch, when I put the new caps in, I'll get that "sweet Vishay cap sound"
and have to wax lyrical as I listen to Black Sabbath and Led Zep and full volume.