I'm not quite sure how to respond to your question, since it's not clear to me how you intend to operate the system. If you are looking ONLY for a phono preamp stage, the two choices which come to mind are either the Creek phono preamp, or the Lehmann Audio Black Cube. I have a Black Cube that I bought used for $425, and I use it for the analog input into my digital pre/pro. I have been very pleased with its performance. If, however, you want to completely replace your older PSE preamp with a newer unit that has a top quality phono stage, then I suggest either the Adcom GFP-750 -- about $800-850 used -- or the older Adcom GFP-565, which also has an excellent phono stage, and can be bought used for less than $350.
Moderately priced phono preamps
I have 500+ records and probably spend on about 5% of my listening time playing records. I have a Rega 3 turntable. I have Legacy Focus speakers ($5400), Rotel pre/processor ($2K), and 3 PSE amps ($1K each). I recently bought a Sony S9000ES CD/DVD/SACD player that I love. I'm still using my 22 year old PSE preamp ($1K in 1978) for my phono stage. I do not expect many to be familiar with the PSE, but would like to buy a phono preamp and compare it with the PSE and return it if it doesn't sound better than the PSE. Right now I'm thinking about the $200 Rotel preamp. Does anyone have comments about the Rotel or any other similarly priced phono preamps?
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- 11 posts total
- 11 posts total