May have sold the old TT, Preamp Mystery Solved.
The local Clist had several turntables for too much money. So I listed my old Sony for less than those so by comparison it would look cheaper. It is less than what I asked for before but more than I had dropped the price to as it sat with no nibbles.
With luck it will be in a new home and loved again. Then I will have some $$ to not spend on new toys. Gotta restrain myself. So fingers crossed!
In other news when I was in the storage area digging out the Sony I also looked for the box to that preamp I could not remember the name of. Found it! It was a Spectro Acoustics Model 217. It is a rare bird now. Not many out there but there are some. It was unique in having selectors to adjust the phono cartridge loading. You could select the picofarads and the Ohms you liked best. I used that feature.
Today that is mostly ignored in preamps. If you use different pickups you really need that feature. Phono pickups are usually quite sensitive to loading. Grados are supposed to be immune, but I have a couple of Audio Technicas that sound like shit when they have the wrong loading.
There is a story behind the company. Phase Linear had a good run but was bought by Pioneer. That is where my turntable came from being a Pioneer branded as a Phase Linear. Many people left the company including the designers who started up Spectro Acoustics. There were a couple other companies born from this including Carver.
Anyway with the name found I located some references on the internet and photos of the guts. Very nice and neat circuits. OP Amps in linear packages. I remember bumping up the power supply in mine which made a very noticeable improvement in the Bass. Comments on the unit say the phono circuit was good and generally say nice things.
As things go the company did not last long. The products were neat, competently designed and now rare. From the photos I think the amps could use some tweaking, but they represent fairly common design practice of the 80s. Nothing weird or interesting.
Well that's one small mystery solved.
If you find one of these preamps open it and bump the power supply capacitors to double or more the stock size. It makes a real difference.
