Cambridge Audio Azur 551P

The strings on the steel guitar on The Man's Too Strong are as crisp and as clear as you would want. To be honest, I'd be happy with this in my system...

I’ve never even serviced mine and it still works with no issues. You’ll have to spend quite a lot for a more modern fully automatic direct drive table I would have thought, and I’m not sure anybody makes them any more. As far as I know even the new Technics direct drives are at least part manual. I’ve got mine hooked up to a super budget Cambridge Audio 551P and to my ears I’d have to spend quite a bit to trade up to something better.

When I first got my LP3 I had an AVR without built-in phono stage and I added an external pre-amp, but mainly because the turntable was located quite far from the AVR so I needed more gain, which the external unit (a Cambridge Audio 551P) provided. I kept using it even when I replaced the AVR with a stereo amp with built-in phono stage, but again more out of convenience than anything else. Then I upgraded the cartridge to an Ortofon OM5E and that really brought the whole system to another level, with a broader soundstage and a lot more detail, for not much money (later I upgraded the stylus to an OM10). I definitely recommend it.

I have the Cambridge Audio 551p and it works awesome with my Project EVO. I also have an ART DJ II that also works great.

Other than that, there are some good external pre-amps you can find under or around £150. I have a Cambridge Audio 551p which I like very much and sounds better than the built-in phono stage in my integrated amp (Cambridge Audio SR20), but there are others like the Ifi Zen Phone which is getting good reviews.

I use a Cambridge Audio Azure 551p on my EVO turntable and it sounds amazing. I used it forever with an ART DJ and decided it was time for a "better" preamp and bought the Schiit Mani (the one everyone has) and tried it and hated it, it was ... Noisy ... disappointed I was already hooking up the ART DJ when my kid suggested we try the CA in the EVO ( I had gotten it when I was still using an LP2x TT) ... We tried it and it was night and day!. I have been using it ever since and we love it...