Post #474343 by Mai Tai on Tue, Aug 4, 2009 12:46 AM

I will be using it mainly for listening at home, and archiving. I used to be a DJ way back in the day, pre dot com bubble, and I've been thinking about doing that again for fun and a little side cash, since I still have all of my vinyl from back in the day, and an enormous collection of 7 inch 45's that I both collected and inherited. I still have some of my old DJ rig, but the mixing board is permanently broken. So I will most likely go out and buy a new mixing board just for DJ'ing purposes.

However, that Parasound preamp sounds good, and versatile, and I would have a need for that, because I have two turntables with moving magnet cartridges, and one turntable with a moving coil cartridge. I will definitely look into that one. I will most likely buy something from my friendly neighborhood stereo hi fi store that deals with a lot of vinyl and turntable equipment, the Sound Well in Berkeley. They are my go-to place for replacement needles, cartridges, as well as some hard to find items. They would most likely have nice new and used preamps, and maybe they'll have something at a good price. They're closed during the week, not open until Thursday, though, so I'll have to wait patiently until then.

You'd think with vinyl being one of the main things I was going to be playing, that I would have made sure that the amplifier would have had some type of phono inputs. I just assumed that all of the nicer receivers still had them, but I definitely assumed wrong. Let this be a warning for any of you folks that still spin vinyl, not all higher end receivers have phono inputs anymore, and that's kind of a shame, like the final end to an era. It kind of makes me want to return the receiver altogether, and buy a nice vintage tube based amp, or a newer model used McIntosh or similar (like I can afford that right now). Eventually, long term, that is the plan.

Until then, keep those suggestions for a preamp coming!