Celebrating Pro-Ject | Phono Box Ultra 500

In early 2018, Pro-Ject celebrated the shipment of their 500,000th phono preamplifier with an exciting design challenge: to create an ultra low-noise phono preamp completely free from the damaging effects of environmental interference, while keeping the design compact and simple enough to fit in the same size chassis as the S2 line of electronics.

After nearly a year of careful design and engineering work, Pro-Ject is proud to introduce the Phono Box Ultra 500 - simply the best compact phono preamplifier Pro-Ject has ever built.

The circuitry of the Phono Box Ultra 500 begins with a fully discrete design that replaces operational amplifiers with carefully match transistor pairs in all critical gain stages. This IC-free design produces a huge, transparent sound with the sort of deep bass slam that is normally associated with the best solid state amplifier designs.

Careful parts selection and a sophisticated multi-layer circuit board mean that signal paths can be kept extremely short, which helps keep channel separation high, and signal-to-noise ratio low. This is especially important when the phono preamplifier is used with low-output moving coil designs that require the full 63 dB of gain the Phono Box Ultra 500 is capable of producing.

Pro-Ject's assault on noise doesn’t end there, however. Environmental noise from cell phones, WiFi routers, and other electronics can wreak havoc on phono preamps. In the S2 line, Pro-Ject combats this with careful grounding and an aluminum chassis. For the Ultra 500, they've gone a step further and created a solid copper chassis that acts as a Faraday Cage, completely eliminating outside electromagnetic and radio frequency noise. This copper chassis is chrome plated to give it a beautiful, durable finish.

The Phono Box Ultra 500 is a special product and is limited to 500 pieces worldwide. Each comes packaged in a beautiful wooden display box. The Phono Box Ultra 500 is now available for purchase in-store or online!