Phase Linear 2000 preamp

Daniel Walte

Active Member
Years ago while in Germany I listened to one of these preamps set up and was very impressed. Never did buy one in Germany. But a few years back snagged one off ebay for $40.00 . Well it looked nice but the sound was terrible phono preamp dull lifeless and tone controls added very little if anything to the audio. So i opened it up and to my disgust found that whoever soldered the boards had to have been trippin. Solder specks all over the boards and solder points actually touching other solder points that weren`t supposed to be joined. I cleaned the boards redid all the solder connections in the whole unit and turned it on. Yea that was the cause of the overall bad sounding preamp. To this day it is a very fine preamp. It was designed by a man who left McIntosh to join Phase Linear. So if anyone has one that there not using because of poor sound quality I highly advise them to open it and see if the soldering is crappy!:music:
 
Great sounding little preamp.

Surprised it could be trashed like that.

It has one of the cleanest and simplest circuit board architecture I have ever seen. Huge pots and only a few scattered nicely spaced out parts.
 
The 2000 comes from one of Carvers minimalist times i think. Not much indside of one.3 IC's a few caps and resistors, some switches and thats about it.
Now, that being said, it has an ambience circuit that does quite a bit with few components, combined with the Model 1000 noise reduction and dynamic range expander you can get some interesting effects.
 
I have a PL 2000 Series II and I just love it. Picked it up at a flea market for $40, took it home, and realized that it was the best-sounding pre I had ever owned, solid state or tubed. It has amazing synergy with my Yamaha M-35. To actually own one, and not listen to it is sad...:sigh:
 
The 2000 comes from one of Carvers minimalist times i think. Not much indside of one.3 IC's a few caps and resistors, some switches and thats about it.
Now, that being said, it has an ambience circuit that does quite a bit with few components, combined with the Model 1000 noise reduction and dynamic range expander you can get some interesting effects.

I hooked up a 2nd amp and rear speakers using the Ambient feature. Great surround effect. A little goes a long way and varies source to source. But controlled by a single rotary knob which is more convenient than modern surround with multitude of digital parameters. Really does recover some of that ambient information to make it sound like you're getting more of the music reverb in the venue. Great for comedy album special effects like Firesign Theater's Waiting For the Electrician.
 
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I really like the 2000 because of it's potential for mods. I'd like to convert mine to for biamping. The ambience circuit would be a summed subwoofer. The opamps have a unique pin out that would require an adaptor board if they were to be upgraded.

Carver's ambience circuit was not that revolutionary. Dynaco had a passive box in the 70's. Do a search on quadaptor.
 
I believe Burr Brown makes an adaptor to change the pinouts, saw a post by Dr. Audio, but it wasn't his thread. A search of Burr Brown on vintage olid state or DIY should do it.

Quadaptor eh? I'll try that.
 
I know this is an ancient thread.... but would it be possible to modify the series II 2000 to have discrete 4-channel input? Or is the ambiance function all it will ever be capable of?

Charles.
 
Great sounding little preamp.

Surprised it could be trashed like that.

It has one of the cleanest and simplest circuit board architecture I have ever seen. Huge pots and only a few scattered nicely spaced out parts.
I also had one for 6 months or so but preferred the sound my SAE Mark 30 connected to AD1305 Heathkit equalizer over it. Nice looking but as we all know beauty is ONLY skin deep.
 
Old thread, but if you notice that the tone controls don't do much, try cleaning the tone turnover switch. This model uses a switch to shift the range of the tone controls. FWIW, I think these are really fantastic preamps that respond well to mods. Some good ones have been documented over on Phoenix forums.

I don't want to hype them up too much because they can still be found for a couple bills, sometimes less, and I'd like another one :D
 
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