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 bought this for a Stanton ST.150 Mk2 for use in my home studio as I thought it would be better than the deck's internal preamp but this wasn't the case. Regardless of input level or capacitance settings the bass response was weaker and the treble too bright with my Ortofon 2M Red cartridge. The Stanton's own preamp is noticeably superior.

It might be an improvement on some internal preamps and good with other cartridges or for live use perhaps.

I bought the ART DJ Pre 2 a couple of month ago and i digitized a lot of LP´s.
Really great - for that price, the quality is very good.

Its very small so you can travel with it or bring it to friends very easily. it could be a little bit more heavy, but if you use the gain poty very rapidly, then it moves some centimeters.

The soundquality is awsome - very low noiselevel. even when you push it real hard.

Can not find any bad things about the DJ Pre 2, except the lights.
They are very very bright - a lot to bright ;-) It really hurts my eyes, if the room is dark.
Not that big deal, because its easy to paint it with a black pan, or which color you like.

So in the end: Fair Preamp, i would by it again !

Disclaimer: I am not an audiophile.

I bought the ART DJ Pre II for a relatively specific reason - both my record player and my AppleTV (via a bluetooth receiver) were outputting directly to my living room speakers, and the record player signal was MUCH quieter than the AppleTV, even with the AppleTV turned all the way down.

Because of this, each time that I wanted to play a record I would have to go over and manually turn UP the volume. And afterwards, you would have to remember to turn it back down - otherwise the AppleTV would be ear-shatteringly loud! Quite an annoying situation.

The ART DJ Pre II provided a very flexible and clear way of boosting the phono signal to match the volume of the AppleTV. Unlike many other phono preamps, this one has an easy gain knob that lets you dial in a specific amount of amplification.

Because of this, it was incredibly easy to manually adjust it so the two signal strengths roughly matched.

No more shockingly loud movies from the AppleTV! No more putting on a record and straining to hear anything. Finally everything was in balance.

So in summary, the plus points:
1. Easy to setup
2. Easy to use (volume adjustment is very nice)
3. Sounds like a clean preamp, not coloring the sound in a detectable way
4. Inexpensive

All in all, I would heartily recommend this preamp - the volume knob alone makes it worth buying.