Sure, but only if it suits your use case and you understand the relationship between price and performance.

There is enormous variation among phono preamplifiers. Cheap phono preamps really only serve the function of adding vinyl playback to affordable systems that don’t already have it. If this is your use case and you don’t mind the ordinary performance guaranteed by cheap phono preamplifiers, then I have no issue with that and support customers purchasing one.

BUT – that use case does not reflect most vinyl lovers. If you DO care about the sonic results, if you love the high resolution performance of vinyl, cheap phono preamps are a terrible option. They tend to sound coarse, grainy, noisy, thin, unrefined, veiled, lack dynamics and possess narrow soundstages and poor imaging. People even slightly bothered by this really should reconsider a cheap phono preamp purchase.

What constitutes ‘cheap’? For me, anything under $300 is not worth buying, unless you literally cannot save up for anything better, or it’s for background music use only. Spending $500 – $1000 brings improved performance, but should be approached with caution. Between $1K and $3K, things improve significantly and over $3K there is potential to acheive really excellent perforce, especially when looking at pre-owned gear.

When buying new, avoid anything with Prolink, Beringer, Pyle, etc on it, unless you want a steaming pyle of sh… sorry! Pre-owned equipment is a different story. $1500 will buy you a $7000 Accuphase AD-290 phono module, below. You’ll still need a rather more expensive Accuphase preamplifier to run it in, however, but you get the idea.

There are good reasons why the best phono preamps are expensive. The quality of parts used in the best phono preamplifiers, engineering and execution are extraordinary, and they need to be, given the extraordinarily small signals and high gain requirements. OK, I know you want to see inside…

Here’s a look at a later Accuphase AD-2820, courtesy of one of my customers, from around 2011:

Wanna see an even better phono preamp? Try the new Accuphase C-57: