“This TT preamp is very well, solidly built. It has a small footprint, but surprisingly heavy for its size. I set up the little tabs at the bottom of the unit, to work with the cartridge specs, and the sound is beautiful, warm and all frequencies are delivered precisely. I use this unit for a MC cartridge and a similar one for a MM cartridge, and sound improvement and sound image is easily noticeable. Caleb, from AA was very helpful with the sale.”
“I'm really enjoying this little preamp. Overall I think it adds a nice warm sound to my vinyl and seems to be an improvement compared to the Phonobox I had previously. Might experiment with different tubes down the road.”
“I absolutely love my Tube Box S2. I have the upgraded Accu Box S2 power-supply as well, feeding an analog input on my Audiolab 6000A Play (class A/B). Sound is smooth and relaxed, yet not lacking any detail. I must add that I upgraded the stock tubes to a pair of Gold Lion 12AX7's, which made it even better. My cartridge is an Ortofon 2M Bronze. Worth every penny!”
“My McIntosh C22 required I install the input RCA cables to the MIC instead of the Phono inputs but that was all the difficulties I had. Kept all at the lowest settings so far and will test out different settings later but I am very pleased! Don't need to turn up my volume to 50 % anymore!”
“OK...I got this for a bedroom system because UNLIKE most little tubed phono stages, this one uses NO IC OP AMPS for any gain stage. First gain stage(s) are discrete, with tubed outputs for the final, as it should be. My downstairs system was begging for the smooth, relaxing sound of tubes, and this one did not disappoint, once I pulled the stock tubes and rolled in some Mullards. The stock 12AA7's had some upper mid glare, which the Mullards are famous for ameliorating....aaaaahhh!
This is a well engineered little unit! If you're running a typical MM, you're not going to NEED any more than the lowest 40db of gain setting. But I increased the gain just to hear the difference. It kept its relaxed, smooth quality all the way up to the 60db+ setting, which you won't need unless you're running a low output MC.
If you are, there are several lower impedance settings via the dip switches underneath, so you can find the suitable loading. You would probably need to hand select some ultra quiet tubes to get a superior signal to noise ratio in this application. But with MM, stock Mullards are fine.
I tried this unit in the big rig upstairs...1st thing that struck me believe it or not was its BASS!....TONS of it, and it goes DEEP....absolutely jaw dropping, in my system. Made my old Quicksilver sound like a slacker, in that regard. But I'm keeping this one for the downstairs system, where it does its job faithfully.If you want to hear what tubes can do, you can do a LOT worse than this unit. Just roll in some Mullards, and enjoy.”
