Phono Preamplifier Seduction

Give me the seduction, give me the pleasure," Ron Sutherland was nearly shouting into the phone. "I want to turn off the analytical mind and just enjoy myself!"

- ALEX HALBERSTADT

To be honest, I've never thought of Sutherland as a pleasure-driven, throw-it-all-to-the-wind sensualist. His designs tend to be sleekly industrial and starkly minimal, with surgically neat internal layouts. And they rely on transistors, generally not the go-to devices for fill-up-the-hot-tub seductiveness.

I've had the opportunity to live with one of his previous phono stages, the Little Loco, which I admired more than loved. Like most trans-impedance phono stages, it played music with enviably silent backgrounds and offered plenty of resolution, but it lacked the juke-box dynamics, rich colors, and sheer juiciness of my favorite tube or hybrid phono stages. Though I didn't dare tell Sutherland, the Little Loco spent much of its stay here on a shelf.

So why am I writing about the Dos Locos? For one, the Locos really are Dos-there are two monoblocks-with an unexpected double set of single-ended inputs and outputs on each chassis. This allows the user to plug in two cartridges and use either without having to switch between them-another quirky benefit of the transimpedance scheme. More interesting, at least to me, is that each monoblock can be used as a standalone mono phono stage, all without the need for a mono button, a splitter, or another method of avoiding ground loops that arise when using mono cartridges in stereo setups. In other words, the Dos Locos offers both a stereo and a mono phono stage in one. Well, in two.

The other reason I agreed to review it was Sutherland himself, who suggested the idea after reading a column I wrote about mono cartridges.2 When we spoke a little later, he sounded excited, not in the blandly upbeat manner of professional marketers but childishly, sincerely excited. That got my attention.