For many generations, true lovers of sound and music are inspired by vinyl playback. Even in these days of high performance digital audio playback systems it is hard to imagine a future without LP’s. There’s just something magical to it. Grimm Audio’s co-founder Peter van Willenswaard spent a life time designing and improving phono preamps, both in solid state and with tubes. Of all stages of audio amplification, phono preamplifiers pose the biggest challenges to a designer. With moving coil cartridges, deep bass signals of a mere 50 nV require no less than 90 dB amplification!
Key Features:
- Unique minimalistic electronic design
- MC and MM cartridge inputs
- RCA and XLR outputs
- Gain and load settings under bottom plate
- Internal silent linear power supply
- Copper shielded interior
For the PW1 “Phono Wizard”, Peter managed to develop a solid state phono preamplifier that matches his best tube based designs. Peter believes that designing a good phono preamp is not about achieving the lowest possible harmonic distortion as an isolated parameter. He searches for an elegantly minimalistic circuit design in which he optimizes the ‘electric environment’ of all the active components, in conjunction with a meticulously tuned power supply. Needless to say that passive components like capacitors and resistors are carefully picked.
The result is a well balanced design with Peter’s signature sound, that is very spacious, detailed and open, but at the same time rhythmically addictive and emotionally involving. The industrial design had to justify this quality. Michiel Uylings of MU1 fame matched the sonics with a simple but powerful cabinet shape and Grimm Audio’s design team made the copper shielded interior look like a piece of art. Truly a design for generations to come.
The gist of Peter’s story is that the Grimm PW1 is completely designed for low noise and speed. The toroidal transformer was developed together with Amplimo so that it can be built in without creating hum. Furthermore, all power supplies are internal shunt power supplies (both Peter’s and Guido Tent’s are used) and the number of capacitors is kept to a minimum. This is because they actually at any time have an impact on playback (especially phase and timing).
The cabinet design is also very minimalist. It is a compact cabinet, with one line optically “breaking” the cabinet. Simple; elegant. Although, of course, that is also a matter of taste. On the back we see a particularly large number of connections. Two sets of inputs: MM and MC. And both balanced and single ended. Balanced can be a bit cramped if you use a large power plug, as we do. Grimm did rotate them a quarter turn for convenience. At the center of the back panel is the connection for ground.
Settings
At the bottom we see all the dipswitches to match the player to the Grimm PW1. The “boxes” separate settings for MC and MM. And for left and right. They are completely mirrored, showing that the pcb design is also neatly mirrored. There is also a separate section for gain and switching between MM and MC. Everything, by the way, you can just adjust while playing; there are no clicks, pops or other side effects.
In the Box:
- Phono pre-amp
- Manual
