Pioneer Spec 1 Stereo Preamplifier Photo Gallery by Fitz Hugh Ludlow at pbase.com

Pioneer Spec 1 Stereo Preamplifier

Holy crap this is a nice piece of gear. The guy selling the Pioneer PL-570 was selling a complete system from the late 1970s that was pretty much top of the line. I had never even heard of this. Even after having plunked down the dough on the tt I just couldn't pass this up. It is in such spectacular condition I really wish I had the dough to snag the matching Spec 4 amp!! :(

It seems to be 100% perfectly functioning, has about 3 scratches and some minor gunk, and has displaced the preamp I've been using for about 6 years now. After having it for a few days there is a certain familiarity - and I suspect one of my childhood friend's fathers had one! If he didn't, he had something that was very similar.

29-JUL-2008

Pioneer Spec 1 Stereo Preamplifier

What a beautiful piece of gear. Talk about your big heavy stepped attenuators! The usual Pioneer tone stack with a 50 and 100 Hz bass controls and 10 and 20 kHz on the treble. Works great. Helpful for some recordings, minimally harmful as far as I can tell so far.

Further tone shaping with a 15 or 30 Hz low filter (useful for turntables that aren't well isolated) and 8 and 12 kHz high filter to take the glare off some old recordings.

Tone bypass, two phono stages with one attenuatable so you can match your two TTs levels! Tuner and two tape inputs and two aux inputs (for your other tuners! or dac, or newfangled mp3 players or computer or ht receiver or whatever).

It has a mixable mic input with fader. The usual Pioneer tape routing flexibility. A nice 0, 15, or 30 dB attenuator switch. It's pretty appropriate for "party, evening, and bedtime" listening levels. What's nice is that it also controls the SECOND set of preamp outs which I have running into another amp running another pair of speakers in the bar. So you really don't need to touch the "bar amp" anymore, everything can be controlled from the Spec 1.

In keeping with its evident design purpose as THEE only interface you need for your system, it actually has speaker-level switching. You're supposed to run your speaker outs from your amp back into the preamp, then let it switch A, B, A+B. Having an amp with only one set of outputs I just might try it, although I'm pretty skeptical that it's possible to run speaker wires through spring clips and switches and not lose some tone no matter how insanely over the top the engineering is.

I'll need some expert advice on how to possibly use this as an ADDITIONAL output on my Aksa amp.

In addition to the usual two routable tape outs, it has two sets of preamp outs, for biamping etc. I have one set going straight into my aging Aksa 100 Nirvana's amp section and to my main speakers. In the past, I used the AKSA's preamp section (Elma source selection switch, Dact attenuator, and I forget what Hugh's Aksa tube buffer circuit was called but it was a very early prototype compared to what he has out now).

I haven't gotten scientific about it, but I fear I need to tell Hugh after all these years I've finally found a piece a gear that can supersede one of his designs! That's right, I'm probably not going to use the Aksa preamp any more. That's saying a lot.

29-JUL-2008