New toys: Parasound JC3 phono preamp & Lyra Delos cartridge

These showed up on Wednesday:

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It's been a while since we've had a "how to set up a turntable" thread. We will here.

I bought these from Galen Carol Audio in San Antonio, Texas. I've been trolling the Internet for a deal on a Parasound JC3 since the new JC3+ was announced. Galen Carol Audio had a demo for $1695 on their "Deals" page. It was just what I was looking for. I called and talked to Galen (nice guy and a good salesman), who was accommodating to me in the purchase of the preamp, the cartridge and a cable.

I installed the Parasound and listened to it for a day to it with my Dynavector 20x2 high output moving coil. What a difference! My Plinius 9200 is known for having a good phono stage (more on that later) but the JC3 easily topped it. Besides having more and better defined bass, in fact better definition throughout all frequencies, it was the volume of the sound that impressed me. Not volume in terms of loudness but volume in terms of space. The JC3 created a three dimensional area, extending well behind each speaker, in which the music appeared. My Plinius' phono stage had depth but only in the middle, creating a triangular stage for the music. The Parasound's image had height, width and depth all the way from outside the left speaker, across the soundstage, to beyond the right speaker. With even better micro dynamics, something at which my Plinius excels, I was hooked. It was fortunate for Galen that we initially made a deal for the cartridge. If I had known how much better the Parasound would make my Dynavector sound, I might not have popped now for the Lyra cartridge, too. Eventually I knew I wanted to step up from the Dynavector 20x2, which is an smooth, accurate, and fabulous if predictable and somewhat workmanlike cartridge, but I would have held off for a while if I'd known how much of an improvement the JC3 would make in my sound.

Right now I'm breaking in the cartridge. I did a basic set-up of the Lyra, satisfied with getting the alignment pretty close but not dead nuts on. There will be time for that later, which I'll document here. Now I just want to play the cartridge for 20 hours. Galen said to expect 40 hours to fully break-in the cartridge but after 20 hours it should be close enough for rock 'n' roll.

high res version

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For the break-in, I had a copy of Tubular Bells that I was going to take to my local record store, selling it to them used for probably a buck. At 25 minutes long, side A was perfect. I'm going to play it 50 times before I do the final set-up. My cartridge will probably hate me for this. I know I'd hate life if I was forced to listen to Tubular Bells 50 times in a row. If you hear a weird news story that is a bad Stephen King rip-off, of a tale of a man who was scratched by his turntable's needle, only to die of blood poisoning while the turntable played "Taps,", you'll know what happened.

 

When the preamp arrived, it was 9° here in Minnesota, which was an improvement from the -12° overnight. Too cold to plug in, I let the Parasound JC3 warm up on the counter for a while. That was a perfect excuse to pop the case. I had to get warm air in there, didn't I? Here's what the insides of a JC3 look like:

full res version

full res version

full res version

full res version

Pretty simple design but in many respects, it isn't. Parasound is proud of their power supply for the JC3, as explained in the manual:

John Curl’s phono preamps are legendary. His approach to amplifying extremely low level
signals gives the listener the best chance to experience the full emotional content of the
source. In the JC 3 the physical implementation of the circuits closely follows the actual
circuit topology and the layout is as compact as possible to minimize pickup of external noise.

The preservation of low level signals is achieved by separating the critical audio signals from
the non-audio circuits and non-audio wiring. Each channel has its own circuit board and each
channel is fully enclosed in its own extruded aluminum “vault.” This vault shields the
sensitive circuits from the JC 3’s power supply and from external sources of noise.

The power transformer is an R-core type, which shares the advantages of a toroid
transformer for minimizing radiated hum. However, it is far superior to a toroid transformer in
preventing noise carried on the AC power line from passing through to its secondary
windings and into the power supply.

A second level of shielding separates the phono vaults from the power supply, power
transformer and even the transformer wires running to the AC inlet on the rear panel. This
shielding consists of two partitions of 3/8” low carbon “mild” steel to prevent any
electromagnetic radiation from reaching the phono modules. The rear panel of the JC 3 is
made of aluminum to prevent any electromagnetic interaction with the sensitive phono
circuitry.

Finally, the JC 3 has an on-board AC line conditioner to filter out high frequency noise and
distortion that may be present on your AC power line. This eliminates a potential source of
noise before it ever reaches the JC 3 power transformer. The resulting extremely low noise
levels enable musical nuances to emerge from an utterly silent background.
​

The new Parasound JC3+ has an even better power supply, as explained by Parasound here and by Michael Fremer here.

 

Beautiful preamp. Tell us how it sounds, and how they make music together.

 

Beautiful, just beautiful.

M~

 

Beautiful equipment and an equally beautiful environment to enjoy it in! Congrats

 

Nice. The Parasound Halo line is pretty cool stuff for the most part.

 

Very nice construction. The Plinius has always had a pretty good reputation for its phono stage, so it's reassuring to hear that the JC-3 provided a substantial improvement. It's nice to be able to buy US made gear that performs and is well priced. I'm a big fan of JC's work and hung around with him at a couple of CES in the past. He has some stories to tell.

 

Parasound in made in Taiwan. Just sayin'. Nothing more, nothing less...

 

I heard the Parasound in a friends system, it was incredible. Enjoy

 

Gorgeous, great sounding gear. I would be proud. Congratulations on the new toys!

 

Congrats and thanks for the great shots and detail. When looking for a phono stage I was considering the JC3 as well but ultimately decided that I needed something that allowed easy on-the-fly loading changes due to vision issues (no dipswitches inside cabinets for me!) so narrowed it to the Aesthetix and Pass Labs.

Anyhow, I have the same cart on my VPI and was wondering what you found to be good capacitive and resistive settings for your Delos? I'm running balanced outs with 66 dB of gain.

Enjoy!

 

I have no idea yet as to loading as I haven't really played the cartridge yet. Beyond hearing that it works, I haven't even listened to one record.

I've never been as anal as some with loading. Certainly I've played around with it in the past (anybody else ever use the DB Systems capacitance loading kit?) but I think I can adjust for any capacitance issues with the cable. The 100 Ω impedance of the JC3 will be perfect for me. I've always been a low output moving coil kind of guy and those tend to have an output impedance of in the 6-9 Ω range. The JC3's input impedance is close enough to ten times that amount to satisfy me.

Otherwise, thank you all for the kind remarks.

I took a new system picture for my profile page (there are many pictures there).

high res version

I'm sure you noticed that I have two turntables. I use the B&O 8002 tangential arm turntable, which has a Soundsmith SMMC-2 cartridge, more than the VPI. Being a fully automatic turntable, it starts with the push of a button and stops all by itself. What a concept.

I knew the B&O's sound would get an upgrade as it would now use the Plinius' phono stage but I didn't expect an order of magnitude improvement in the music. In the past, the B&O was hooked up to a Musical Fidelity V-LPS phono stage. I knew it was cheap. I bought it on close-out for $100. But, wow, what a difference. The improvement in the B&O's sound by using the Plinius' phono stage instead of the Musical Fidelity one was massive. It was greater than the improvement with the VPI going from the Plinius to the JC3. That's another way of saying the Plinius' phono stage is pretty good to begin with. Using the Plinius with the B&O proves that once again.

I really want to hear my new Lyra Delos cartridge but I'm patient. I'm hardly slumming it with my B&O. The Lyra continues to break in, now on its 24th play of Tubular Bells. As long as I don't have to listen to it, I can make it until #50. That means I'll set up the VPI for real tomorrow. Stay tuned.

 

OMG! you are about to enter vinyl HEAVEN! . THAT is SOME SYSTEM

 

Play it! You could drop dead before it breaks in, you know you want to.

M~

 

How does the B&O hold up to the best high end tables? I have a fellow member in the LVAC who has one.

 

Okay and your point is?

M~

 

I was responding to Geoff. He said made here in the US. It's made in Taiwan. I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm indifferent and just stating the facts.

 

It's not a real high end product. Its errors are errors of omission, which are easier to handle, than errors of addition. Its sound is quite musical, always a goal in B&O's design, but I imagine a good modern manual belt drive in the $1,000 range would outperform it.

But then, you can't be half in the bag or on your hands and knees, cleaning the kitchen floor, or fall asleep listening to music with that modern manual belt drive and I can do all of those with the B&O. It will be a very sad day when it dies. I have a great tech in Chicago, one of the last B&O authorized service centers, who will work on it but parts availability is becoming a real issue. My last repair required a tone arm motor out of a donor turntable. I was lucky.

 

get a Q-up

 

Nice additions to your set-up, enjoy.

 

Why aren't you listening to your Delos right out of the box? It's a great cartridge, even when new....I don't understand why you are torturing yourself and why you don't enjoy the ride of a new cartridge from zero hours to broken in.

 

Cool, thanks for the info! The member in question might bring it over to my place for an audition. We'll see what happens.

 

As a kid, I always enjoyed the weeks up to Christmas as much as Christmas morning.

Been there. Done that.

 

Much nicer looking than a q-up!