Phono Preamp Reviews

CiAudio (better known as Channel Island Audio) is an American-manufacturer of high quality, moderately priced electronics that you can explore at the company’s website. The PEQ 1 MKII is built to an unexpectedly high standard given its $995 price tag and American heritage. The outside is a sturdy milled aluminum chassis unusual at this price point as are the highest quality panel mounted Cardas™ RCA jacks. Inside is a dual mono design with each input jack going to an identically laid out, independent mono circuit, which helps to eliminate crosstalk.

First released in 2010, Parasound’s JC 3 MM/MC phono preamplifier began as a dual-mono John Curl-designed phono section retro-fit for its JC2 line stage. With vinyl’s popularity on the rise, Parasound’s Richard Schram figured a stand-alone version priced right might find an audience.

Michael Fremer wrote about the EAR 834P Deluxe in August 2003 (Vol.26 No.8):

I've been meaning to review this Tim de Paravicini design for years. Finally, egged on by readers, here goes.

Here’s a comparison of eight phono preamplifiers incorporating a variety of features and ranging in price from $399 to $4500. The adjacent “vote” story includes files made using each of them so this write-up will not contain sonic comparisons. Those will follow when the voting closes. When that happens depends upon how many readers participate and how quickly they vote.

While in excess of 6000 people read the story and many thousands downloaded the files, for some reason fewer than 100 analogplanet.com readers chose to vote for which phono preamp sounded best reproducing a short segment of Mehmet Ali Sanlikol's big band album what's next.

For almost two decades now British phono preamp manufacturer Graham Slee has been designing, producing and selling specialized high quality phono preamplifiers. His latest is the $1449 Accession, an unusually versatile model that includes a volume pot, which means the Accession can be used as preamplifier to drive a power amplifier. If all you plan on doing is playing records using one turntable and a moving magnet cartridge (or a high output MC or moving iron), the Accession obviates the need for a separate preamplifier.