B ack in vinyl’s heyday, the provision of a phono stage in your amplifier was almost a given. With records being the main source of music, the quality of the phono circuit was paramount for any manufacturer aiming to be a serious hi-fi contender.
But the rising popularity of the compact disc in the 1990s changed that. Manufacturers either discarded phono stages altogether as a way of reducing costs, or redesigned them as an extra feature – box-ticking exercises that never quite revealed the quality in those record grooves.