I went to a rummage sale and the guy had a box of cables for 10 cents each. Some computer power cords, and some RCA cables, and a couple phone cords. 16 cords total. I offered $1 for the whole box, and he agreed.
He asked me why I needed all of them. I told him I work on electronics. Thats when he said he has something I might want. He went in the house and came out with a Kenwood Basic C2, Stereo Control Amplifier. Made in (1984-90). The guy said it's dead, and he was going to throw it away, so I can have it. He said he connected speakers to it and it dont do anything.
I got home and was getting out a RCA plug to connect to the output terminals, to hook up a speaker, when I began to look closer at it, and thought "this is a preamp, not a power amp". To make sure what I had, I looked on the web, and found this:
I have to admit, this is called an "amplifier" so I did sort of think it needed speakers, even though RCA plugs are not usually used for speakers except some of the real old cheap stuff.
It turned out this was my lucky day. This preamp sounds great. (And I didn't even connect it to my main power amp yet, I just connected it to a small mono guitar amp that I use for testing stuff in the shop. It needed a little contact cleaner on the selector switches, but works great.
I am a little confused though about the phone switch. It has the following selections:
MM (Moving Magnet)
47K 100KMC (Moving Coil)
10 ohm 30 ohm 100 ohmOk, I understand what they are saying, but how do I know if my cartridge is MM or MC, and what the resistance rating is?
This appears to be a real useful thing, but I never even knew there were different kinds of cartridges. In the past, I just installed a cartridge and plugged it into "Phono".