U-Turn Audio - Pluto Phono Preamp

The Pluto is often compared with the Schiit Mani as the two best preamps in this price range. The Mani is an audiophile favorite of sorts and considered to punch way above its weight class. It tends to be favored over the Pluto. I made the mistake of buying a Mani. Months later, here I am with this 5 star review for Pluto. How did we get here? 1. First and foremost, the Mani is highly susceptible to RFI from local radio stations. It seems to depend on how close stations are to you and the idiosyncrasies of your particular unit. Well, I live in a major city, downtown, multilple stations nearby, and my unit had so much static and radio interference that I had to set it on the absolute lowest gain settings just to make it halfway listenable. The radio static was audible in between songs and it was absolutely miserable. If you live in Wyoming, Mani might be a homerun. If you live in a major city surrounded by radio stations, avoid like the plague or pray to Preamp Jesus that you get a good unit. Which brings me to.... 2) Gain settings. Some see it as a plus that the Mani has several variable gain settings. The lowest is 30db, while the standard setting is 48. Well, because of my static issue this was a major pain. 30db helped with the static, but is so quiet you have to CRANK the volume, adding distortion and other issues. 48db was much too high, making the static too loud for playback. I found myself wishing I had something in between.... 3) Build design. The Mani has an on/off switch and an obscenely bright power light. Originally, I thought I wanted the on/off switch, until I did research and learned that preamps use very little power, so it's sort of a worthless feature. The best part of the switch? It let me switch off the Mani power LED, which is practically blinding. I found myself deeply resenting the build of this unit after a week of use. Taken all together, this was just too much. I had to fight with Schiit to let me return the unit, which was a miserable experience. So there I am, sitting without a preamp, wondering what to do. I had written off the Pluto but decided to go for it. And oh my god am I happy I did. First, the sound quality is every bit as good as the Mani, and I notice absolutely no difference in quality between them. Second, the Pluto is fixed at 36db of gain, which is the exact right amount for my system and my volume knobs. It just sings, and my volume is always around 50% - rather than 20% or 80% with the Mani. I still have some minor RFI interference, but less than half of what I had with the Mani, so it is now unnoticeable. Last but not least, the build quality is superior in every possible way. The unit stays cooler, is always on (and drawing minimal power!), and has a very subtle, comforting, useful power LED light that is not like the Mani where you felt you were staring into an exploding star. Ah, life with the Pluto. After a month of constant fighting, adjustments, tinkering, worrying, cursing with the Mani, I got my Pluto, plugged it in, and do you know what I'm thinking about these days? The music. I'd give this preamp 1000 stars if I could.

Running an SL-1200 MK5 into a Yamaha A-S701 integrated amp. Wasn't sure if I would hear a huge difference but this pre amp is a game changer. Silky smooth. It is about the listening experience not someone who posts graphs on a forum. Easily the best $100 you can spend. Thank you U-Turn! If I ever move back to Boston I am applying with this company.

Phono Preamps don't get much love these days. When I purchased my Orbit Plus Turntable I was firmly convinced my Denon receiver had a phono preamp in it because there was a PHONO selection on the remote. Don't fall for that deception if you are thinking of adding in a turntable. Go and look at the back of whatever you are contemplating plugging the turntable in to. The Pluto Phono preamp does what it says it will do: give you a clean and full bodied signal for your amplifier or receiver to work with. The sound quality is great : you can't tell its there at all. No coloring of the sound. It just straight up takes whatever the turntable is playing and passes on a neutral and usable signal. Great packaging and the case and connectors look to be of high quality. If I needed another phono preamp, I would buy this one again

Before purchasing, my system was comprised of a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon DC Turntable, a Yamaha A-S301 Integrated amplifer, and a pair of SVS Prime bookshelf speakers. The turntable was connected to the built-in preamp on the Yamaha. The combo sounded great (to me) although some of my LPs had a "thin" or "brittle" sound to me and could be fatiguing to listen to at higher volumes. I read many favorable reviews of the Pluto online (though not so much here on Amazon) and thought I'd give it a try. The build quality of the unit is top notch. and the unit a fair bit heavier than expected. As for the sound, at first it didn't blow me away compared to what I had, but as I began A/B testing between it and Yamaha built-in, the difference was pretty pronounced, the Pluto has a much fuller mid-bass to it which really helps warm up the sound. Those "thin" sounding LPs? much less so now vs. the built-in. In short, it works as advertised, actually made a noticeable sound quality improvement and was priced right. I'll be keeping it.

I had originally bought a Pyle pre-amp as it was cheap and I did not feel the pre-amp was that important. How wrong I was as that product caused an annoying hum/buzz when used. Using the process of elimination I determined I needed a better pre-amp. I plugged this one in and it’s been great sounding vinyl ever since! Great product! A little pricey, but you typically get what you pay for! If you need a great pre-amp this one can more than get the job done!

Wow! A simple but wonderful phono preamp. I wish it had on/off switch, but other than that it's so good. Mind you, we don't have a head-splitting hifi setup. We have nice entry grade audiophile type equipment (entry level Paradigm speakers, good Yamaha AV receiver/amp, good Gotham cabling). Much better preamp than my serviceable $50 phono preamp I got a few years ago. This is a wonderful price/quality ratio component.

When it comes to price-to-value ratio, it's impossible to beat the U-Turn Pluto. Shopping for a solid state preamp means that you're looking for the cleanest signal possible. In other words, you want something that will lift life out of your cartridge without coloring it. I personally describe it as "giving air". I've extensively used the Schiit Mani, Emotiva XPS-1 and Cambridge Audio Azure 651p over the past few years. I've had the Pluto for a month and without a doubt, it absolutely blows the Mani out of the water and easily matches (maybe even outmatches) the XPS-1 and Azure 651p at half the price. My cherished 2M Blue has never sounded better. To my ears, there's no contest. New to turntables and looking for a solid preamp? Get the Pluto. Experienced with turntables but looking for the best solid state preamp under $400? Get the Pluto.

To start, I am super happy with the Pluto itself; it sounds great, was relatively inexpensive, and despite not having a power switch, seems to hold to its claim of energy efficiency. But for how U-Turn spoke of and presented themselves on their website, I expected a bit more from the total package. Straight off the bat, I was disappointed in the generic cardboard packaging. It protected everything well enough of course, but for a company seemingly so thoughtful in their appearance/presentation, you'd have thought they would have sprung for custom packaging. The only bit of reference to the product itself within was the single page instructional insert. Not a big deal of course, but is unfortunately my only superficial complaint. Also included inside: an RCA cable and power supply. As advertised, but, as with the packaging itself, not at the quality level expected. The RCA cable is cheap. Which, ok, it's a free cable. Not everyone is an audiophile requiring shielded, gold plated wiring. And the Pluto didn't have an audiophile price. But it's not just cheap, it honestly appears used. The pair is split nearly half the length, and it wasn't end bound up in the box, but was instead loosely wadded up as pictured. If it's new, they didn't didn't just go cheap, they went as cheap as they could. Still, it works, so even this complaint isn't functional, but it's disappointing nonetheless. My final complain IS actually functional though. The Pluto comes with a ground - a necessity for many turntables, especially older ones like mine, that are not themselves grounded - but this requires that the Pluto is grounded. This is obvious and should really go without saying. Yet, the power supply included with my Pluto was (as you can see in the picture) not grounded. Therefore, I cannot ground my turntable, and am left with the buzzing hum that accompanies an ungrounded turntable. This oversight is completely dumbfounding. To add insult to injury, the power supply also appears used or at least extremely cheap as it too came generically packaged in a non descript box with the cable wadded loosely inside. Again, the Pluto itself is great, it's everything else that left something to be desired. Mostly a new power supply that I now have to research for a purchase myself if I want grounding on my record player (as probably 99% of purchasers would). I've considered the possibility that this is all the fault of amazon instead. The generic packaging is their style. So perhaps Amazon receives only the Pluto itself from U-Turn and simply bundles their own cheap crap with it. This isn't any more acceptable of course, but at least it would make more sense than U-Turn themselves owning these oversights. I'd be curious to hear from other purchasers, especially any who have ordered directly from U-Turn.