December 8, 2011

  • Primare PRE30, Part 6

    Oh boy.  1991.  What a bad time to be a hair band.  Nevertheless, Europe pressed on, and released Prisoners In Paradise.  It's kind of an assembly line rock album.  But it does feature "All Or Nothing At All," co-written by Mr. Big's Eric Martin.  And don't miss "Halfway To Heaven."

    Ya know, when I think back 20 years, I remember my housemates and me being apprehensive about opening up audio components.  I mean, even if we did open them up, what would we do?  It was neat to look at audio components' innards, but we didn't know what we were looking at.  So we ended up putting the lid back.  I mention this, because in the early-90s, a couple companies specialized in "modding" existing audio gear.  This was especially true for Phillips-based CD players, and Adcom power amps.  Nowadays, not too many audiophiles think about modifying their existing gear. 

    As for the Primare PRE30, the motherboard occupies most of the interior real estate.  For a preamp, the PRE30 sports a large toroidal transformer.  Now, you can see why the RCA jacks are so crammed; the PRE30 uses those ubiquitous dual-pair modules.  Man, I used to see these in mid-fi gear, as well as my old $400 Adcom GTP-400 tuner/preamp.

    The PRE30 also has a circuit board behind the display.

    You know what?  The band Europe hailed from Sweden.  The company Primare hails from Sweden.  But I looked and looked and looked within the PRE30.  I could not find any sticker, telling where the PRE30 is made.  I assume China, but who knows?