AUDIO
Amplifiers › PHONO PREAMPS
52 www.audio.de›11/2020
WITH AFTERBURNER
Lehmann Audio has upgraded
the Black Cube phono preamp
to the Black Cube II model. The
external PWX power supply
turns it into the SE – a very hot
affair.
By Lothar Brandt
H
ow time flies: already a quar-
ter of a century ago, back in
1995, Norbert Lehmann put
his first Black Cube phono
preamp on the market. Owing
to its excellent price-performance ratio,
the little black box in its rustic guise cel-
ebrated a tremendous success. Sporting
a 5 millimetre thick front panel, the Black
Cube II oozes a much more classy ap-
peal. The now gold-plated RCA sockets
have moved to the rear side. The Black
Cube II with the outsourced PSU stand-
ard power supply costs 679 euros and is
available in black, silver or stylish chrome
(99 euros extra charge). With the consid-
erably beefier energy bar named PWX,
which also purifies the mains current,
it turns into the Black Cube SE II and
changes hands for 949 euros. On both
variants you’ll look in vain for an on/off
switch. Once connected to the mains
outlet, the Black Cube II/SE continuously
sucks 3 watts and thus keeps itself per-
manently at operating temperature.
On the bottom side we have six un-
labelled DIP switch banks (“dual inline
packages“), each with four, three or two
switches respectively per channel. One
might assume that one switch bank is
used for setting the impedance of the
MC inputs, the second for the MM ca-
pacitance and number three for the gain
factor. Wrong. Only the user manual
reveals how and where to engage the
switches for the various pickup types.
Default values for MM are an exem-
plarily low 100 picofarads, 47 kiloohms
and 36 or 46 decibels of gain, for MC
these are 100 ohms or 1 kiloohm and
56 or 66 decibels. For instance, if you
wish to terminate your MC with 500
ohms, Lehmann Audio will deliver the
appropriate resistors for free. Laudable.
However, those who don’t dare the sol-
derless insertion of the delicate parts,
should have their dealers do it for them.
This regards even more the option of
bridging the output capacitors which can
bring more kick soundwise. But if the
downstream amplifier has no DC offset
protection filter, this may cause an irre-
versible damage.
Likewise the 16 subsonic filters are
more for professionals – here they can
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A GOOD SUPPLY:
The additional PWX power supply (left) provides the
Black Cube II with increased aplomb.