PHONO STAGES

The phonostage received a lot of attention and technological breakthrough around 14 years ago and rightly so; it is a component that deals with tiny tiny signals and simply has an enormous impact on the sound quality of a Vinyl chain.

Soulnote from Japan has been blazing a trail in the sphere of Phono preamps over the last few years. Their E1 is our starter phono which packs at huge punch whilst the E2 is truly standout and might just rewrite the entire landscape of sub £15,000 stages. Incredible sonic performance and with an exhaustive feature set, like most Soulnote pieces, it has no real right to be as low cost as it is. Their current DS-only E3 will thankfully be revised at the end of 2025 to include MC and MM inputs.

Thrax Audio offer the LCR Orpheus. It is one of the first products created by Thrax and is now in Mk3 guise having been steadily improved over the last 10 years or so. A very intelligent designs with very good functionality and of course Thrax’s highly transparent and vivid house sound.

We also offer the Brinkmann Edison II. This is another superb phono with lots of functionality and Brinkmann’s extremely balanced and delicate sound. The Edison sports vacuum tubes but is perhaps less intrinsically tube-like that the Allnics. Sixteen gain settings, 3 inputs, mono/stereo, phase and mute control.

The phonostages of Tidal are bundled into the preamplifiers but do not underestimate their might simply because they are part of a linestage. The Preos started life as a no holds barred phonostage with a volume control, the phono stage for the Precensio is a whole separate chassis and the phono input of the new Prisma would need a hell of a unit from another manufacturer to match it in ability. Any Tidal phono operates at the highest level of transparency and purity. The Bugatti MP-1 is their ultar high end flagship and includes the very best phonostage they have ever created.

JMF Audio provide our two flagship standalone phono units, the 7.2 and 7.3 and are widely acclaimed in the industry. JMF represents the ultimate in straight wire signal transfer between source and loudspeaker and performs at the very highest levels of transparency possible in a package which is unmistakably true substance over decoration and hot air. With a modular construction original units can be continually upgraded as and when new research and development allows, without the need for product change.