Phono Preamp Reviews

Allnic, Kang Su Park’s company’s name, is a portmanteau of “all” and “nickel,” a tribute to the material in the transformer cores he uses in his equipment, often referred to by the trade name Permalloy. (The pedantic will note that the cores are not, in fact, all nickel because they also contain ferrosilicon, otherwise known as electrical steel.)

To wit, the user manual that comes with the H-7000 phono preamp pours one out for the homies: “Allnic is grateful to Mr. G.W. Elmen of Western Electric for inventing Permalloy for transformer core use, and in so doing, providing an enormous service to recorded music listeners everywhere.”

Though the H-7000 isn’t Allnic’s top-of-the-line phono stage, it happens to be a fanatical attempt to solve the issues in decoding the tiny signals generated by phono cartridges. Its steampunk 35lb chassis is powered by an external 18lb power supply. One reason for this zaftig casework is the unit’s LCR circuit, which means that it uses inductors as well as capacitors and resistors to decode the RIAA signal. The Allnic contains two transformer-coupled active gain stages — hey, no coupling capacitors — and in addition to a pair of step-up transformers, features output transformers.

And the H-7000 uses a whopping nine tubes: four for gain, four for voltage regulation, and a rectifier, all drawn from a new-old-stock mix originating in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. The review unit I listened to came with the optional silver step-up transformers, wound in house, which bring its SRP from the $19,800 base price to a formidable $21,300. (Footnote 1)

There’s plenty of flexibility on board for the maximalist vinyl geek. The H-7000 offers two moving magnet (MM) inputs, which provide 40dB of gain, and two moving coil (MC) inputs, which rely on the step-up transformers. Those can be switched between four taps that offer a total of 62, 66, 68, and 72dB of gain, respectively.

The input impedance can be switched between 20k, 30k, 47k, and 75k ohms; that unusual last setting allows the higher-gain SUT settings to be used without loading down a typical low-output moving coil cartridge excessively.

The Allnic also offers a choice of single-ended or balanced outputs, but no volume control or mono switch. The front panel contains buttons for muting and inverting phase as well as a pair of nifty-looking current meters, while the tubes are arrayed across the top panel in distinctive glass chimneys. The website of Allnic’s U.S. distributor, Kevalin Audio, calls the phono stage “beefy” and “masculine,” descriptors I will leave alone.

My first impression when listening to music through the Allnic — which I heard with the Ortofon SPU Royal N, the Koetsu Urushi Vermilion, and the Dynavector DRT XV-1s cartridges mounted on my Garrard 301 turntable in either the Schick 12in or Groovemaster 4 12in tonearms — was of wideband response and ample information.

While listening to “Bismillahi ‘Rrahmani ‘Rrahim” from Harold Budd’s Pavilion of Dreams, a Brian Eno–produced minimalist classic released in 1981, the interplay between Richard Bernas’s celeste and Marion Brown’s alto saxophone was rendered in ultrahigh resolution, the instrumental halos and reverberant trails sounding palpable enough to touch. And on the next track, “Two Songs: 1. Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord / 2. Butterfly Sunday,” adapted from compositions by Pharoah Sanders and John Coltrane, respectively, Linda Richardson’s mezzo-soprano and Maggie Thomas’s harp sounded so vividly detailed and present that they nearly startled me out of my seat.

The H-7000 also turned out to be remarkably, consistently quiet. Given the unusually high number of transformers inside, this didn’t surprise me, but it lent the copious sonic detail extracted from my records a suitably serene backdrop against which to unfold. Transient response was also superb, portraying music in a quicksilver manner that never impeded its flow. And the soundstage was finely layered and, when called for, both wide and deep.

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Editor’s note: This review first appeared in our sister site Stereophile’s August 2026 print edition, and it is shared here on AP with their kind permission. For more of Alex Halberstadt’s Brilliant Corners columns (this review is the first part of installment #41) — go here.

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Footnote 1: Allnic Audio, 1105 Sicox Tower 513-14, Sangdaewon-1dong, Jungwon-gu, Songnam City, Kyungki-do 462-806, South Korea. Tel: (82) 31-777-9447, (82) 70-8708-4468. Fax: (82) 31-777-9448. Web: allnicaudio.com. U.S. distributor: Kevalin Audio, 7275 NE Avalon Drive Corvallis, Oregon, 97330. Tel: (503) 292-5592. Email: info@kevalinaudio.com. Web: kevalinaudio.com.