Eastern Electric Minimax Phono PreamplifierFor the past few weeks I've been mulling over whether or not to bother with writing and posting this review. I have been extremely busy with work...severely burnt-out is a description that would also apply. Today is the first day in a week that I have had time to really enjoy some music. I have missed it terribly. Putting this review together qualifies as work in my book, and I wasn't sure if more work is really what I need. Of course, an alternative to being way overworked is to be unemployed. As tired as I have been the past few weeks I don't even want to think about that as a possibility. There are folks out there who are really suffering. So being overworked is a good problem to have relative to some of the alternatives and I shouldn't complain.
I am something of an audio skeptic. I find audio equipment reviews entertaining for the most part. Occasionally they are even informative. Everyone who writes a review is biased. Professional reviewers are usually better at disguising their biases than most of us, but they have them nonetheless. Lately I have sworn off reading reviews of what has euphemistically become known as mid-fi gear, but not because I frown on such gear (most of my equipment is regarded as mid-fi by some, but the label doesn't bother me). It is because many of these reviews read like they were taken from a template, and the reviewer always seems obliged to justify the existence of high end gear. How many of you have read this phrase in a review on Stereophile, 6moons, The Absolute Sound, etc. etc.: "in every respect this is a solid <
amp, preamp, or what have you> with ear-pleasing sonics that will put a smile on your face, perhaps only lacking in that last little bit of air that only the very best <
amps, preamps, or what have you> have to offer." Sound familiar? I have read this phrase so much that I can't stand it any longer. I think reviews tend to be stratified by how gear is priced rather than how it is designed and how it sounds. Perhaps because it is becoming increasingly difficult for reviewers to differentiate among the more better designed solutions. I have some other thoughts about why this happens, but this is not the time to get into that.
Let me spend a few minutes telling you about my own biases, and then you can decide whether or not to read on or if I am just full of it. I come from an electrical engineering background, though I have been working in the Computer Science field for about the last 20 or so years. Because of my background I believe that most audio electronics are simple circuits by function. That is not to say that they cannot be engineered and designed to be immensely complex, only to posit that an audio amplifier, for example, is a basic circuit and it doesn't require large wads of cash to get one that sounds very good. I believe that the simpler the design, usually the better. My choice of components mostly reflects that philosophy. The more elements one crams into the design, the more complex it becomes. I think there is great sounding equipment that is way over-engineered (whether it is also over priced is subject to an individual's concept of value). I also think there is great sounding gear that features very simple, uncomplicated designs. I have my own feelings about what it means to climb the price scale ladder in home audio, and largely agree that spending more money gets you better sounding equipment. But I also feel the point of diminishing returns is a lot lower than what is generally accepted among audiophiles. Beyond a certain point a lot of gear starts to sound similar, if not the same, and more money does not buy you better sounding equipment even if it buys you better engineered and designed equipment. I tend not to think about audio in terms of how much equipment costs, but rather how it is designed and how it sounds. I'm not made out of money by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't mind spending a few bucks to get what I want. I also believe that how a piece of equipment sounds is not the only reason to buy it. Sometimes its features, or design, or aesthetics are just as compelling as how it sounds.
It has been my experience that speakers and the room have the greatest impact on sound quality, and amplifiers/preamps have probably the least (assuming the amp is a good match for the speaker). I don't expect everyone to share that view. Since we are talking about analogue setups here, I believe the turntable, tonearm, and cartridge are the most important parts of the chain. Before I bought the Eastern Electric Minimax my experience with phono preamps has been confined to the following: TC-760LC ($73 from Phonopreamps.com), Cambridge 640P ($179 from Audio Advisor), Musical Surroundings Phenomena II ($600 from Acoustic Sounds), and Dynavector P75 MKII ($750 from Needledoctor.com). The phono preamp I was using daily until buying the Eastern Electric was the Musical Surroundings Phenomena II, which I recently sold although I felt it was a damned fine phono pre. The remainder of my analogue chain consists of the following: SOTA Star Sapphire vacuum turntable (Series III finished in Koa Wood), SME 309 tonearm, topped off with a Ortofon Jubilee moving coil cartridge.
Thus far I have tried four solid state phono preamps and found them all to be virtually indistinguishable from one another. Of those four I had a preference for the Musical Surroundings Phenomena II, mainly because of its many gain and loading options that allow it to work well with virtually any cartridge made. I honestly felt that this was going to be my last phono preamp. Then I started looking at tube phono preamps (silly me!) and the product that kept bouncing to the top of the list was the Eastern Electric Minimax, which sells new for about $1,500 and used on Agon for about $900 when you can find them.
Let me start by saying that $1,500 is a lot more than I ever expected to spend on a phono preamp. The Minimax accumulates a considerable portion of its cost though the use of step-up transformers that are part of the MC section. You will find no dizzying array of DIP switches for gain and loading on the back of this preamp. There are three inputs: one for MM carts, one for high output MC carts, and a third for low output MC carts. The maximum gain is 58db, which quite honestly was something of a concern since my Ortofon Jubilee comes in at .34mv output. I was fairly sure it wouldn't be a problem, and as it turns out it wasn't. In fact, I would be comfortable using this preamp with carts that go down as low as .25mv output. For tubes the Minimax uses a single 6X4 rectifier and three 12AX7 triodes. I instantly replaced the stock Chinese tubes with good quality NOS tubes (one RCA 6X4 and three matched Siemens 12AX7 tubes). I have not had very good luck with Chinese tubes lately with a few of them burning out prematurely after just a few months of use, so I don't think they stand up very well to American or European made NOS tubes from the likes of RCA, Sylvania, Mullard, Tung Sol, Siemens, Telefunken, etc.
I'm sure you are wondering about how it sounds. Excellent, actually. I won't babble on incessantly using meaningless audiophilese. The Eastern Electric Minimax performs exactly the way a very well designed and implemented phono preamp should. I don't perceive that it adds anything to the music that wasn't there (aside from a tiny amount of hum), or that it takes away something from the music that should be there. I have heard three different tube phono preamps (though the EE is the first I have owned) and all of them had varying degrees of hum. The minimax comes in at slightly above black. It is not a pronounced buzz or hum but rather a very faint hum that becomes inaudible when I move three feet away from my speakers. This is with no music playing, the turntable selected as the source, and the volume dialed up to my normal listening levels. When the stylus hits the record you cannot discren any hum at all, even when standing right next to the speakers. For some this infintessimal amount of hum might be a deal breaker but it isn't a problem for me. I don't expect any tube phono preamp to be as quiet as solid state. If there were any surprises it would be that adding the Minimax did not increase the overall warmth of the sound. But since my preamp and power amps are tube-based this is probably a good thing.
Comparison with the TC-760LCI won't try to compare the Minimax with every other phono-preamp I have owned. Since I found the four solid state phono-preamps I have used to sound very similar, let me just offer a quick comparison of the Minimax to the least expensive model I have owned, which would be the $73 TC-760LC from Phonopreamps.com.
I hate the term giant killer. I really do, because it seems to be a sheepish attempt at advancing the false notion that more expensive gear
must sound better simply by virtue of its higher cost. This may be true, because more expensive gear is usually (though not always) better designed and in some instances (though not all) it uses better components. Then again, I have seen some damned pricey gear that looked great on the outside but on the inside suffered from poor quality workmanship and used substandard parts. I am much less interested in how a $20K amp sounds than I am in how a $1,500 amp sounds. When I got back into vinyl some years ago the first phono pre I bought was the little TC-760LC for less than a C-note delivered to my door. It is not going to win any beauty contests, and while it might lack the heft of something like the Minimax it more than makes up for it with big, detailed, room filling sound. I will even go as far as to say that I think the TC-760LC sounds every bit as good as the Minimax, and it is slightly quieter since it uses solid state components. It is also quite small. So small in fact, that I was able to slip it into my rack on top of the Monster Power HTS 5100 power conditioning unit. I know that might not seem like a good place for a phono preamp but let me tell you that it was dead quiet there.
Which phono preamp do I think is better? Well, that really depends on how one defines better. The Minimax is no doubt better designed, and I do like the use of step-up transformers in the MC section. The design aesthetic scores a boatload of points with me. I love how it looks and how it matches nicely the rest of the gear in my rack. There is no doubt that the Minimax costs a lot more to bring to market than the TC-760LC. But folks, we are talking about a price difference of $1,427, and judging strictly on the basis of sound quality the Minimax is not worth its much higher price. But let me go further than that. I don't think the price of
any phono preamp above the cost of the TC-760LC is justified by sound quality alone....(now I am listening for the sound of folks reading this and then clicking away to someplace else on AC, shaking their heads as they go). Having said all that you might be surprised to learn that I am keeping the Minimax and will continue to use it in my setup. Why would I do this if the cheap phono-pre sounded just as good? Well as I said earlier, there are reasons other than sound quality to buy equipment, and there are reasons other than sound quality that factor into one's enjoyment of their system. Put another way, the Minimax does not sound worse than the TC-760LC, it is just as good sounding. And it satisfies my desire to have a phono preamp that aesthetically matches the rest of my system. I can't justify the price of the Minimax on performance alone. And if that is all that mattered, then it would be gone in short order and the TC-760LC would be back in my rack. But the Minimax pushes all the right buttons in other areas: design, aesthetics, simplicity, elegance, etc. that really make it a compelling choice for me, and in these respects I can easily justify the price. You are not going get that in a $73 component, nor should you expect to.
Concluding ThoughtsSo where do the chips fall? If someone came to me and said they wanted a great sounding phono preamp, but wasn't really concerned too much with design or aesthetics, and said that a small form factor was preferred, and went on to say they had a budget of $2,000....I would recommend that they spend $73 on the TC-760LC and use the remainder of that budget to buy vinyl. If another person came to me and said they had a budget of $2,000 and wanted a great sounding tube phono preamp, one that featured point-to-point wiring, one that was very well designed and looked great in the rack, then I would recommend the Eastern Electric Minimax without hesitation.
Some of you might be thinking that the only way a low cost phono preamp could compare so favorably to one that is much more expenisve is for me to have defective hearing, or me not knowing what I am listening for or how to listen for it, or me simply not knowing what I am talking about. I have to admit that these are all distinct possibilities. It could be that I am not adept at the sort of intense, deeply focused listening required to discern the microscopic differences in sonic character that we are so often told make big differences in how we experience musical enjoyment. Or, it may simply be that if one has to listen
that intensely and intently to gleen the smallest of differences, then perhaps there aren't really any differences worth noting in the first place. I leave it to you to ponder which of these is most likely.
I don't really have any plans to return to this thread and respond to comments. I have even less interest in debating anything I have said here or in defending my opinions. This review merely reflects my own thoughts and experiences. I have tried to acknowledge some of my own biases so you can judge accordingly. If you have any questions about the Minimax a PM might get you a quicker response.
Happy listening.
--Jerome
