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Phase Linear 4000 Series II Preamp


tom b. 57

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I am wrestling with the thought of picking up this preamp for cheap, but don't know much about it. Are these good preamps? I love the vintage stuff, and own a Phase Linear 3000 series II preamp and it works fine. I just don't know if the 4000 would be much of an improvement. It looks cooler. I am hoping someone on this forum has experience with this preamp and can shed some light on this subject for me. The seller says it works but the pots are dirty. I figure that is relatively common considering it has been sitting for awhile and the age of it.

Tom

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Thank you guys for the input. I decided to pass on it, even though it was only $60.00. I just figured it made no sense to bring it home just to sell it down the road a bit. I forgot about the sonic turd bit from Duke. He had told me that once before on a different PL preamp, or maybe it was a Carver I don't remember for sure.

Tom

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  • 4 years later...

What a coinsidence,I was thinking of getting one of the PL4000auto corralation pre/amp for my 2chnl system.Right now I have an Onkyo P301 which does it's job well and also can split duties between both the devices of the H/T and the straight work of the 2chl. I can play my dock,5 disc player and singal play Denon cdp w/ease going from tuner to get dock and 5 disc to cd to get the Denon single play cdp.So I was wondering if this unit could do both or should I just try a ADCOM 450 or so for comparison. Right now I have zero hum or hiss out of any of the components and I want to keep it that way. By my standards the speakers I own are the weakest link and my Polkie forumites politely call them entry level party speakers. Me I would love a pair of Forte's or some thing along the Heritage line. So any one out there think my wish list is to high or just out of reach considering the sigs of some of your gear.I think my Adcom gfa555 could push anything around that could fitinmy apt. so power is not lacking....Thanks,just a thought

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Personally, I never really cared much for any of Bob Carver's early equipment, Phase Linear in particular. They always seemed a lot noisier than they spec'd or should be. IMHO that preamp is somewhat thin and tinny, metallic sounding. Cool looking stuff though.

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I had a Phase Linear 700 series II power amp.

The meters were very pretty.

The LaScala were all revealing.

The Marantz 1200B with less than 1/3 the rated power of the PL was definitely the cheese by comparison and that's why I still have it.

The PL also blew all it's transistors when someone "not me" accidentally shorted the outputs using a jack plug as a speaker plug and the cable got bumped and pulled the plug half out.

I actually wondered if the Phase was actually Linear between left and right channels as there was definitely something weird going on there, like you felt like turning your head sideways to fix the sound or something. It won the contest for shortest time I owned something except for say paper towels.

I have no idea about any other Carver product and after that experience I was never interested

People used to rework them by matching the transistors and the associated resistors in the output stage and increased the power and reduced the distortion significantly. They were all the rage and it was do you have stock standard or a re-worked one.

People used them in their Quad 4way JBL fully horn loaded PA systems and they were successful of you were really careful to build a special reinforced case so the power transformer did not rip the front panel of the casing and dismember and totally destroy the amp in the truck on the way to the gig. You also had to cool them. The cooling fins were ridiculous just a bit of aluminium bent into a u shape. It was really like a bad joke. The structural issues were repeated in the series II amps as if no one realised they were being torn in to pieces. Totally gob smacked and yet history remarks it was a revolutionary breakthrough just because it dumped 350watts per channel.

Being fair and reasonable. The amp was intended to drive the PL speakers in a house and not taken on the road with a band. The PL speakers with the PL going full power were as loud as background music.

Remarkable.

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