2. analog
  3. 125723-119

Do they make a quiet great sounding phono pre amp??

Hi, I have purchased and listened to 3 phono preamps which are: A musical surroundings phonomena, musical surroundings Nova II, and a Manley labs Chinook. The Manely labs Chinook is by far bettter sounding then the first two (double the cost too). But, All three have given me nothing but trouble (noise,noise,noise even terrible clipped signals!), and 2 of them basically failed on me. So before I go DIGITAL, can someone please tell me who makes a phono preamp in the $2,000-$3,000 range (tube or solid state) that I can rely on, and sounds as good or better than the Chinook?? Thanks.


Matt M                                             
128x128mattmiller

Showing 2 responses by smrex13

smrex13
645 posts
 
Just thinking out loud here, but you have used a solid state, a tubed, and a battery-powered phono stage and had noise and clipped signals with all of them?  It is likely that the problem is somewhere else in your set-up.  All three of those phono stages are well respected and should perform reasonably well in most rigs.  You might consider things like an EMI/RFI issue, some type of impedance mismatch problem somewhere in the system, noisy power line, etc.

Just my two cents - good luck!
Scott
smrex13
645 posts
 
So glad to hear it worked out!  Did you settle on the Chinook?
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