funkyfresh electronics

One of the things we've been doing during Covid is listening to more vinyl. It's been nice to revisit the analog realm of the spinning discs. Of course, it was also a good time to check out some phono preamps. We created a nice compact setup with our vintage Pioneer turntable, Yamaha studio monitors and an ART Precision Phono Preamp. We pick it up for $65 and think it provides excellent value. It's small, easy to connect, nicely labeled and sounds great.

The ART includes settings for moving magnet and moving coil cartridges. It has a switchable low-cut filter and includes standard photo line input and output jacks. It's a very small unit so the power supply is external. On the front there's a gain control, clipping indicator and really bright power light. Really. They could make this 1/10 the brightness and that would be fine. ART should have a dimming capability because if you want to fall asleep to some vinyl this light is going to keep you up. Now, if you prefer to have a nighlight this offers extra value. Depends how you look at it but yes we had to put a cloth over that light at night. It's distracting. <br<
Other than that, this is a great little preamp. The sound quality clean and transparent with plenty of ouuput. We were able to drive our Yamaha studio monitors to very high output level no problem. For a simple, clean and very good sounding setup the ART Precision Phono Preamp is an excellent value.

Learn more and get all the specs here.