Parasound's JC 3 Jr. brings your vinyl to life with warm, articulate — and quiet — signal boosting and equalization. This phono stage offers flexible gain and impedance controls to give you the freedom to experiment with cartridges and get the best out of your favorites. And balanced and unbalanced outputs let you connect to any amplifier or stereo preamp you choose.

Designed to capture detail

With its toroidal transformer, aluminum shielding, and efficient topology, the JC 3 Jr. achieves a very low signal-to-noise ratio. It shares many of the same top-quality components of its bigger brother, the JC 3+ with a recognizably similar open and detailed soundstage. But despite the Jr.'s smaller price and profile, there's no doubt that it punches above its weight.

The legacy of John Curl

The JC 3 Jr. features circuitry designed by by John Curl, a legend in audio engineering. He started his career in the 1970s, designing tape and video recorders at Ampex, and he had a hand in building the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound. Curl has worked with Parasound since 1989, designing all of their high-power amplifiers and more. The power supply, transistors, capacitors and other parts in the JC 3 Jr. were chosen to offer high performance at a reasonable price.

Product highlights:

• compatible with moving magnet and moving coil phono cartridges

• 3-way cartridge select switch:
  
  
  • moving magnet: 47k ohm
  
  
  • moving coil: 47k ohm
  
  
  • moving coil: variable 50-550 ohms — independent knob adjustment in 10 ohm increments
  
  
  

• 3-way gain select switch
  
  
  • 40/50/60 dB (when using unbalanced RCA outputs)
  
  
  • 46/56/66 dB (when using balanced XLR outputs)
  
  
  

• signal-to-noise ratio:
  
  
  • 40 dB gain setting: 85 dB
  
  
  • 50 dB gain setting: 89 dB
  
  
  • 60 dB gain setting: 94 dB
  
  
  

• total harmonic distortion: < 0.02% at 1 kHz

• selectable mono or stereo output

• aluminum shield separates power supply from audio circuits, reducing noise

• shielded toroid power transformer

Connections:

• 1 pair unbalanced RCA inputs

• 1 pair unbalanced RCA outputs

• 1 pair balanced XLR outputs

• 3.5mm 12V trigger input and output jacks