For many generations, true lovers of sound and music are inspired by vinyl playback. Even in these days of high performance digital audio playback systems it is hard to imagine a future without LP’s. There’s just something magical to it. 

Grimm Audio’s co-founder Peter van Willenswaard spent a life time designing and improving phono preamps, both in solid state and with tubes. Of all stages of audio amplification, phono preamplifiers pose the biggest challenges to a designer. With moving coil cartridges, deep bass signals of a mere 50 nV require no less than 90 dB amplification! 

For the PW1 “Phono Wizard”, Peter managed to develop a solid state phono preamplifier that matches his best tube based designs. Peter believes that designing a good phono preamp is not about achieving the lowest possible harmonic distortion as an isolated parameter. He searches for an elegantly minimalistic circuit design in which he optimizes the ‘electric environment’ of all the active components, in conjunction with a meticulously tuned power supply. Needless to say that passive components like capacitors and resistors are carefully picked.

The result is a well balanced design with Peter’s signature sound, that is very spacious, detailed and open, but at the same time rhythmically addictive and emotionally involving. 

The industrial design had to justify this quality. Michiel Uylings of MU1 fame matched the sonics with a simple but powerful cabinet shape and Grimm Audio’s design team made the copper shielded interior look like a piece of art. Truly a design for generations to come.