Taken me a while to marshall my thoughts - not sure how much of value I have to contribute but I'll do my best
For me, in the end there were just too many phono stages in the shootout to really get a meaningful impression of what I liked best - I got to the point of thinking 'you know, they all sound pretty good to me, I think I'll just sit back and enjoy the music'.
That said, some stages did stand out for me as more musically engaging than others - I liked all of Nick's stages, even the cheap one. The Arkless and Paradise stages were really nice, I also liked the Modwight (ironic as my AMB linestage has just replaced a Modwright LS100) and even though the NVA wasn't operating optimally, there was something about the way it played music that I really liked too.
I was rather hoping we'd get the opportunity to try my scratch build AMB linestage in place of the Souluution preamp, especially as it's been suggested that the low impedance of the latter's inputs might have presented an issue for some of the phonostages? (I configured the AMB to have 25kOhm impedance inputs). But, in all fairness, it was billed as a phono stage comparison so I can't really complain. In the end we used my AMB to convert the XLR balanced output from the Souluution to RCA unbalanced for the OTL amps.
I must admit I wasn't overly keen on the Maxonic speakers - sorry David! They did a heck of a lot of things right - my Maria Callas LP sounded amazing on them, I felt like she was right there in front of me (can't remember which phono stage was in operation at the time). However, when we played the Handel Royal Fireworks Suite (Szell, Decca, Speakers Corner reissue) - I don't know, the orchestra horn section in particular sounded really shrieky to me - I started to wonder about whether it was the effect of horn instruments, being played through horn drivers - so you had a 'doubling up' of the horn sound which made things a bit overwhelming? Probably just me.
That all said - it was a really great day out, thanks to David for hosting it and it was so nice to spend the day with a group of like-minded music lovers.