ART DJ Pre II

It's one of the cheapests phono preamps you can get with a gain knob. I choose it for that reason, however I thought it was a volume knob, and those are different things. However it was still useful considering I had no knob (or at least «easy to reach» knob) to control loudness in my first setup, where I had the turntable conected to this and then directly to active speakers. The gain knob only lets you adjust the strenght of the signal within a certain range. Doesn't let you, for example bring the sound to a «mute».
Either way I still have it in my current setup, and even though a better one can impact the sound quality, I find this one perfect enough, as there are other components (like the speakers and the needle) that have a much greater impact in the final result.

I purchased this product to connect a turntable directly to a set of active speakers at home to listen to some vinyls from time to time. Small space so no point on having a mixer or something like that so thought this would be a good solution. Connection and quality is great, metal sturdy built and easy to connect. The transformer is a bit bigger than expected and I need an adapter for UK plugs so sometimes not very steady (depends on the adapter) but does its job. Only thing missing in this unit is probably an on and off button (or even turning off when volume is all out) as you need to actually unplug it from power to turn it off. Other than that, no problems with it just yet!