Bg audio electronics 2012 by Max Com

The 12 Most Significant Preamplifiers of all time

Dynaco PAS-3

Introduced: 1960; Price: $60 (kit), $80 (assembled) Designed by the late Ed Laurent, of Stereo 70 fame, the PAS-2 was Dynaco’s first stereo preamplifier. It was introduced in 1960 in both kit ($60) and assembled ($80) versions. The PAS-3 followed thereafter and differed only cosmetically. The final member of the series, the PAS-3X, was introduced in 1966 and featured a revised tone-control circuit and less sensitivity to load impedance. Good sound on a budget was a Dynaco specialty. The PAS series delivered on those counts together with a suite of excellent technical measurements, including inverse RIAA accuracy. The result was considerable mass-market appeal. Dynaco is said to have sold over 100,000 units over its lifetime, probably more than any other low-cost model with high-end pretensions, and in the process has enriched the audio lives of most baby-boomer audiophiles. Sonically, its calling card was a sweet midrange that no solid-state unit could touch during the 1960s and 1970s. Today it is still a wildly popular vehicle for upgrades and modifications. A true tube classic. —Dick Olsher

18 Guide to Audio Electronics

Marantz Model 7

Audio Research Corporation SP3

Introduced: 1958; Price: $264 When Saul Marantz introduced the Model 7 stereo preamplifier in 1958, there were few who would have challenged the assertion that it was the best preamplifier in the world, a dominance it held for many years to come. All-tube, as was everything in those days, the 7 pioneered a unique three-stage phono-preamp equalizer that became known as the “Marantz circuit”—the company’s legendary electronics genius Sidney Smith contributed to the circuit while Saul himself did the aesthetics, which were the very mirror of function and mold of form for any serious preamplifier, not to mention solidifying the classic Marantz look with its brushed champagne-gold finish. Despite its price—Marantz components were, along with McIntosh’s, the most expensive around—the 7 sold over a 130,000 units. Marantz cognoscenti insist the 7C iteration (the “C” meaning it came in a walnut cabinet) was the best-sounding. —Paul Seydor

Introduced: 1972; Price: $650 If you go to the Audio Research Corporation’s Web site, you will still find a page devoted to the preamplifier that put this company on the map and that, for many of us, launched the high end (alongside the Magneplanar 1-U, with which it was so often coupled). Introduced in 1972, the SP3, for which ARC is still offering upgrades, isn’t really a preamp but a family of preamps (SP3a, SP3a-1, SP3b, etc.), each member of which was (and is) slightly better than its predecessor. It’s not as if the SP3 were the first great tube preamplifier (as you can see from this very list); what it was was the first great tube preamplifier that didn’t sound markedly tubey—that had the neutrality, speed, resolution, low noise floor, soundstaging, and full bandwidth of its thenubiquitous solid-state competition and had it while fully retaining (indeed improving upon) the bloom, light, air, and delicacy of tone color and texture of glass-bottle audio. Of course, what seemed like a “less tubey” sound back then was really fairly tubey by today’s ARC standards, but that doesn’t change the fact that the marvelous family of SP3s changed the face of high fidelity, putting tubes securely back in the picture, where they remain to this day. Along with its progenitor, the Dyna PAS-3, arguably the single most influential electronic component in high-end-audio history. —Jonathan Valin