Phono Preamp Reviews

Veteran phono-preamplifier designer Ron Sutherland has been partial, of late, to battery power. Getting off the grid can produce superb results, as demonstrated by his Hubble phono preamp ($3800), powered by 16 alkaline batteries.

I favorably reviewed the Hubble in the February 2010 issue, and remember loving most everything about it—particularly its drop-dead-quiet backdrops, its solid, weighty bottom end, and its fully fleshed-out instrumental textures. I was less enthused by its somewhat soft, muted high-frequency transients, though of course tastes and associated gear will differ. I need more grit, particularly for rock; you may not.

Shortly after the July 2013 issue of Stereophile hit the newsstands, I received an e-mail from audio restoration expert Doug Pomeroy, who specializes in the digital preservation of disc pressing metal parts, acetates, and 78s . . . His and my opinions about digital sound couldn't be more divergent.

The quest for vinyl quiet seems, at best, quixotic. By "vinyl quiet" I don't mean "quiet vinyl," which we now reliably get from pressing plants like QRP, RTI, Pallas, and a few others. I'm referring to makes of phono preamplifiers who set as a primary design goal electronic "quiet," ie, an absence or minimum of electronic noise. A stylus coursing through the groove of even the quietest LP still produces a considerable amount of noise.

Other than being well built and high priced ($15,000, $22,000, $60,000), these three phono preamps have very little in common, in design or in sound. One has vacuum tubes, including a direct-heated 5U4G rectifier tube (the Phasemation). Two are solid-state (the PBN and Qualia). Two feature separate chassis for the left and right channels (the Qualia and Phasemation). All three have outboard power supplies. Two come from Japan (the Qualia and Phasemation), one is made in the US (PBN). All three are elegantly built, inside and out. Two are physically attractive, one is lab-grade butt ugly. One has a host of convenience features, including various equalization curves and three inputs (Phasemation). One offers no adjustability whatsoever (Qualia). One has two gain settings and multiple loading options (PBN). Two are designed to be used only with moving-coil cartridges, while the third (Phasemation) can also accommodate moving-magnets. One is fully balanced and dual- differential (PBN), two are not.

In my January 2014 column, I reviewed HiFiction's Thales TTT-Compact turntable and Simplicity tangential-tracking pivoted tonearm, an intriguing combo from Micha Huber, a talented Swiss watchmaker turned turntable designer.

The TTT-Compact's particulars, including its battery-powered motor and exceptional ease of setup, are described in detail in that review, which includes a link to a useful animation that shows how the design, as Huber says, "reduces the perfectly tangential tracking to pivot points, while the pick-up cartridge is taken and aligned on the Thales' Circle."

Suffice it to say that while the HiFiction tonearm is named Simplicity, its design is anything but.

Designer Bill Hutchins, of LKV Research, builds the 2-SB moving-magnet/moving-coil phono preamplifier in North Conway, in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; he uses as many US-sourced parts as possible, and sells his products factory direct. I reviewed the 2-SB in March 2014, on AnalogPlanet.com: the 2-SB's sound was exceptionally fine—especially if you like refined, solid-state quiet and detail, and especially considering its then-price of $2500. Since that review's publication, the 2-SB has been upgraded with a version of the third gain stage from LKV's JFET-based Veros One phono preamp ($6500; see below), and its price has risen to a still-reasonable $3000.

In May 2014, Bill Hutchins introduced the Veros One phono preamplifier ($6500).

ModWright Instruments' PH 150 moving-coil/moving-magnet phono stage measures 17" wide by 5" high by 12" deep and weighs 19lb. Knobs on its front panel let you easily make adjustments that with some phono preamps require accessing the rear panel or going inside. Starting at the left, the Select knob offers settings for MC, MM, and Mute. The Gain knob offers levels of 0dB, –6dB, and –12dB. With MC selected, those settings would correspond with 72, 66, and 60dB of gain, respectively; with MM, the numbers would be 57, 51, and 45dB, the last being more typical of most MM stages.

First, let's talk about problems with grounding and hum...