- Pro-Ject launches new valve-based pre-amps: one compact, one full size
- Replaceable valves and wide support for MM and MC turntables
- £240 and £529 respectively
Pro-Ject has announced two new phono pre-amplifiers, the Tube Box E and the Tube Box S3 B. Both products bring the warmth of valves to your turntable setup, and the very affordable Tube Box E would be a particularly good upgrade for vinyl fans on a budget.
The Tube Box E is based on the well-received Tube Box S2, and it's been made with more affordable components in order to drive the price down: where the Tube Box S2 is currently retailing for around £339 in the UK, the Tube Box E is £240 (about $325 / AU$500).
If you've invested in an affordable option among the best turntables but are now thinking maybe you'd like to start playing around with the sound – and, in particular, adding the warmth of tube amps into your system – this looks really tempting to me.
The Tube Box S3 B is a higher-specification pre-amp, but it's still relatively affordable at £529 (about $715 / AU$1,100).
Pro-Ject Tube Box E and Tube Box S3 B: key features
The Pro-Ject Tube Box E crams a fully discrete, dual mono design into its very compact case and comes with replaceable valves, which means you can swap them out to change the sonic characteristics or just renew them when they eventually wear out.
The Tube Box E supports a wide range of moving magnet and moving coil cartridges, with adjustable gain settings on the front of the unit and both capacitance and impedance tuning via dip-switches on the underside of the pre-amp.
Pro-Ject says the Tube Box E delivers "high-end qualities at an entry-level price", and given the name, I assume it's a perfect for the Pro-Ject Juke Box E1 that I reviewed, or the newer Pro-Ject Juke Box E1.2 that was recently unveiled – both of which lack a built-in phono stage.
The more expensive, higher specification Tube Box S3 B is also valve-based, and once again the valves are replaceable. The Tube Box S3 B has a fully symmetrical and discrete gain stage, designed to be paired with a balanced-ready turntable via its 5-pin mini-XLR input.
It's larger than the Tube Box E, so all the adjustments are on the front panel, with gain adjustable from 40-65dB, multiple options for capacitance and impedance and the ability to connect two turntables at once: one unbalanced and one balanced, with the Tube Box S3 B remembering the settings for each and recalling them when you switch between them.
Both models are on sale in the UK from August 2025 – I'd expect a US launch to follow shortly after, based on Pro-Ject's recent history, with prices announced closer to the time (depending on current tariffs).
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