Just purchased a Belles 150A Reference amp. Watch should my preamp be..

Just purchased a Belles 150A Reference amp.

You need to look at the gain and input impedance, before jumping in, so should others.

With an input impedance of 100kohm and gain at only 1.27v!! for full output the 150A is begging for a passive preamp or active with very low gain.

As a medium/high gain preamp will have it’s volume control too low down for very high listening level already, not giving you much control over the volume, and also having higher noise figures because your throwing away the sources gain.

A Shiit Freya will give you the option of passive, tube or solid state outputs at lower gain than normal active preamps. As it has many good features.

http://www.schiit.com/products/freya

And get a good phono stage with low output impedance with medium to high gain.

Cheers George

Hadn't heard anything, but glowing reviews of that Belles unit. Is it just that it doesn't fit in my system well? Or does that Belles 150a necessarily limit preamp choice? 

Unfortanely for me, I am a newbie and those numbers mean next to nothing, and I have been resorting to judging equipment based on other's characterization. Is there a simplified video crash course or articles that help me understand why those numbers should be alarming to me.

Is there a simplified video crash course or articles that help me understand why those numbers should be alarming to me.

No not really that you would understand.

To put it simply as possible, most sources have over 2v output, your 150A only needs 1.27v in, for it to give full watts output.
So you don’t need more gain from an active preamp. What you need is a preamp with little or no gain.
This is why the Schiit Freya is a good match as it has little or no gain, depending on which output you use.

Cheers George

I looked up the 1.27V figure and it seems that may be associated with the 150A Belles and not the 150A reference, which has an input sensitivity of 1.4V according to another page. Still, much less than the 2V. What would an acceptable small amount of gain?