Phono Stage w/Pot for analog only rig

Check out the Art Audio Vinyl One on the used market (~1500). With NOS tubes, it is very good. Good luck.

I agree with Jcbtubes about the Art Audio Vinyl One. It replaced a Pass Aleph Ono and sounds much richer and lifelike, especially in the lower frequencies.

Thank you for the repsonse. Now what if I decided to go with a line stage and separate phono and would then not need a pot on the phono?

I worry about anything correctly describable as a volume pot (as opposed to a ladder stepped attenuator), since in my experience even an potentiometer with an audiophile rep, like Alps Black Beauty, say, degrades the sound and can take away some of the quality you may be paying major money for elsewhere in the phono preamp. Can you build your own stepped attenuator, or get one from Goldpoint, say? Or even build one into a phono preamp, in the sense of putting preamp and attenuator(s) in a single DIY chassis? I did that with an AHT DM-P phono preamp and have never looked back. You can even get wild and use Audio Note Japan tantalum resistors, for a warmer, more tube-like sound.

The Art Audio VO is/or can easily be configured for one set of outputs direct and one set via the volume control (it has two sets of RCA outputs). Tom_nice is right, but it will set you back a bit for the better ladder-type or transformer VC. Good luck.

Add a Dact Attenuator, and even a Dact phono pre-amp I think it's the 101.

If you have tube power stages, you may want to go with a SS a (goodun) for the pre-amplification of the phono stage.

Just a thought. I use a Chamelot into a Threshold pre-amp into a Cary and it's just right, not too tubey, not too SS.

Also on the CD, consider a HK burner dual unit. The DA stages is pretty darn good, and you can burn those precious vinyl albums for the car and those times when your just too tired to mess with the vinyl. Or those times when you tend to fall asleep listening to vinyl and wake up a couple of hours later to that thump thump thump of the stylus going round and round in the same groove.

just a different thought.

jeff