Just wanted to add a bit of my own experience...I had in my home, in my system, an older Monbrison for a few weeks about a year and a half ago, before putting my newer model back in. The newer one was a fair bit better - sounding more like the typical Shindo house sound (more textured, more depth, more sense of ease, seemingly better balance of timing allocated to leading edge of notes vs. body of notes vs. decay of notes).
It wasn't a subtle difference, the new one was a lot better - but that was intentional IMHO, as a few years back the price went up by $2K and my untrained eye feels like there's a higher level of parts selection that goes into the new Monbrison than the previous generation.
This isn't to side with anybody here - I'm not trying to sell anything or suck up to anybody - it was just my experience with the 2 units.
One area though where the older one seemed a bit better: it's phono stage was a bit quieter.
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