[anexprogrammer]

I guess it depends where you place "not very expensive", £100-200 will get you a good hifi preamp phono stage with MC/MM. You can pay far more if you want silly esoterica. It's not very far removed from the quality that would typically come "free" with a decent mid-market older preamp.

[TylerE]

Not just older amps can have good built-ins.

Perviously I was running a standalone phono stage (Can't remember the exact model offhand, but it was $250 or so - solid, well reviewed component.) I upgrade to a Rega Brio amp about 2 years ago which has a built in phono stage that was even better.