Only if you like ‘cheap’ sound from your vinyl playback system!

There is enormous variation among phono preamplifiers, and sound technical reasons why the best phono preamps, ie not Cambridge Audio, Gold Note, NAD, Pro-Ject, etc, are genuinely expensive.

The parts quality, engineering and execution found in the best phono preamps are extraordinary, and need to be, given the extraordinarily small signals and high gain requirements. Anybody working in studios, with microphones and mic preamps, will understand this only too well.

Cheap phono preamps really only serve the function of adding vinyl playback to affordable systems that don’t already have it, where sound quality doesn’t matter. If this is your use case and you don’t mind the ordinary performance delivered by cheap phono preamplifiers, then no problem.

That use case does not reflect most vinyl lovers, however, and certainly not visitors of this website. For those who care about the sonic results and love the high-resolution performance of vinyl, cheap phono preamps are a terrible option. They sound coarse, grainy, noisy, thin, unrefined, veiled, lack dynamics and possess narrow soundstages and poor imaging. People worried about this really should reconsider a cheap phono preamp purchase.

What constitutes ‘cheap’? For me, anything under $300 is not worth buying, unless it’s for background music only. Spending $500 – $1000 brings improved performance, but this price band should be viewed with caution, as it’s all junk here really. Between $1K and $3K, things improve significantly and over $3K, there is potential to achieve really excellent performance, especially with pre-owned gear.

When buying new, avoid Prolink, Beringer, Pyle, etc, unless you want a steaming ‘pyle’ of sh*t! 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, but you get the idea. Different universes.

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: