SOLD
Preamp is in excellent condition and operates perfectly. There are no scratches or cosmetic flaws that I can see. It has 3 inputs and two outputs. One set of inputs/outputs is wired with OFC copper throughout for the best signal quality. Dimensions are about 2” high, 19” wide and 6.5” deep. Included is the original box, and the generic Sony remote the SOLD SOLD SOLD
This is the second one of these I've owned, and they are great. I was using this one in combination with an Eastern Electric BBA because needed a little gain in my current system, plus I like tubes. Reason for sale is I bought a pretty nice CJ tube
preamp that also uses Vishay metal foil resistor ladder for volume attenuation.
What Placette preamps are known for are their 125-step attenuators hand built entirely with super-premium Vishay S102 foil resistors, providing perhaps the most transparent and distortion free sound of any preamp. From a Stereophile review:
The idea behind the Placette is also simple. Most source components have enough output voltage to drive a power amplifier—they just need a way to control volume. Why not eliminate the active components of a traditional preamp or line stage altogether, along with all of their distortions? But Placette also believes that most volume controls have their own problems: step attenuators have too few steps, even the best potentiometers can cause distortion and channel-to-channel imbalances, and all of them present variable capacitive and inductive loads that might degrade frequency response. The only solution to these problems, Placette believes, is their approach of switched discrete Vishay foil resistors.
There are many glowing reviews of Placette preamps available via a web search, or directly from the Placette web site. Below are some excerpts from an Absolute Sound review.
Guy Hammel is a man with an obsession and a mission: the obsession with transparency: the mission to build a better volume control. "The main thing I'm trying to communicate to people is the extreme importance of the volume control." Despite two-volt outputs from CD players and DACs, the need for a preamplifier is "more related to the need for an accurate volume control. Accurate in the sense of not introducing non-linear distortions and in that it can track both channels at every possible volume setting, and still keep both right and left channels at exactly the same level."
Once the basics of circuitry have been addressed, volume pots, Hammel believes, are the primary culprits behind sonic degradation in most electronics. The Vishay S102 metal-foil resistor "presents an extremely low inductance load at audio frequencies and offers the easiest possible load that a source can ever drive into. The noise that is present in all resistors is very near the theoretical limit with Vishays, 20 to 40 dB below other types.”
