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 1 response by fourwnds

It seems to me you have enough tubes in your system to experiment with some solid state options within your price range and quite possibly find a great all around over balance along the quiet attribute your looking for. I have tried Peter's Liberty b2b-1 phono stage and loved it especially the stereo separation it provided. And it was very quiet. At the time I had a solid state amp so it was a presentation that for me was needing some tubes at the time. 

I was looking at your system, and it's very nice, I was looking to see what you had a couple things plugged into and I could not quite make it out but It looks like just a basic sorta small multi outlet deal. If so that might be a weak spot source for some noise issues in a system.