Review: Parasound JC 3+ Phono Preamplifier

Other voices, other rooms.

After graduating from Bennington College, and living full-time in Vermont for nearly 2 years, I moved back down south, first to NJ for a brief 6-month stint, and then to NYC’s Upper West Side (the less nice part) as planned and coordinated by one of my college friends. Let’s call him MM. Once MM managed to round up our Bennington crew within a 10 block radius from 86th Street on up ( I was on the up side), we met every Sunday for brunch, also part of The Plan, and eventually with a slightly larger group once a month for book club.

“You can join if you promise not to pick any difficult books. No philosophy!”

I agreed, you nearly never said no to MM, and the first book we read was Truman Capote’s debut novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, a Southern Gothic affair that made NJ seem like Kansas. Sure, we had our fair share of characters in the NJ ‘burbs, but we were obvious about it, in your face about it because subtlety was viewed as weakness.

The Parasound JC 3+ Phono Preamplifier is the final phono stage in our Phono Stage Survey, the 8th for anyone who hasn’t been counting, designed by industry veteran John Curl of Vendetta Research fame. Here’s J. Gordon Holt from his review of the Vendetta SCP-2 Phono Preamp in Stereophile (c.1995):

Few people in the audio business would deny that John Curl is an audio design genius—arguably the greatest one of our generation.

Who am I to argue with J. Gordon Holt?

The JC3+ can handle the output from Moving Magnet (MM) and Moving Coil (MC) cartridges with the flip of a toggle switch, offering adjustable input impedance (50 – 550 Ω variable, 47k Ω fixed) by way of a pair of recessed rear panel mounted knobs, one for each channel. The rest of the business end of the JC3+ offers single-ended Vampire 24k gold-plated RCA ins and out, and balanced Neutrik XRL outputs, a screw-down Ground terminal, AC Polarity switch (Invert/Normal), optional 12V Trigger control, a power button and IEC inlet.

Here’s the bullet list version from Parasound on things you get with the + over the previous model:

  • Variable MC load adjust independent for each channel from 50-550 ohms with dual gang potentiometers specially made for Parasound by Vishay.
  • Curl-Thompson tweaked circuits to further reduce the JC 3 silent background noise.
  • 24k gold plated copper traces on phono module boards for utmost conductivity and most transparency/detail in the music.
  • 47% larger low ESR power supply filter caps greater reserve for head-snapping dynamics.
image credit: Parasound

Head snapping! The JC 3+ is a dual mono design, with each channel residing in its own extruded aluminum house inside. There’s also a built-in AC line conditioner to prevent AC noise from polluting the circuits.

The front panel, that comes in black or silver, offers two back-lit buttons on either side—power on the left and Mono on the right (Mono switch can improve sound of mono and older LPs). Sitting in the center directly under the Parasound logo is John Curl’s signature, a very nice touch to my mind as the people behind the products are too often ignored, imo. When writing reviews, I always try to keep this in mind—there are people behind these products—and the hifi gear we own and love is a product of their labor, their work. I was raised to respect other people’s work, my grandfather instilled this in me fiercely, so I take care in what I say, something else that is too often ignored in this wonderful hobby, imo.

As was the case with the other phono stages, the Parasound sat in with same supporting cast—the Michell Gyro SE ‘table/Michell TA8 tonearm/Ortofon 2M Black MM cartridge, Leben CS600X integrated amp, DeVore O/96 speakers with cabling from AudioQuest, with all of the components sitting on my Box Furniture ‘Fallen A’ rack.

Let’s begin with Phoebe Bridgers Copycat Killer, her killer 45RPM EP from 2020, which we last talked about in the Hegel V10 (review). Here, Bridgers is backed by string arrangements from multi-instrumentalist and arranger Rob Moose and I can tell you that the Parasound pulled more detail, delicacy, and weight from these grooves, while projecting a larger and airier sound image as compared to the Hegel, which costs about half the price of the JC 3+. There was a real sense of a more fully formed sound image, with each player and Bridgers performing within that space in a more they-are-there sense. Sounds emerged from silence to peak and back down again with silky precision, like the thing(s) responsible for them were manifest in Barn.

I find this record touching, don’t tell NJ, and with the Parasound in play it more than tugged at my heartstrings because quality in reproduction can make for greater and more consistent emotional involvement. The “greater” and “more consistent” parts are two reasons I bother with pursuing the quality of this experience.

Of course the most relevant apples-to-apples comparison from our bevy of phono stages is with the Manley Chinook (review), which costs the same, down to the dollar, as the JC 3+. Let’s re-visit Martha Argerich’s Bach, as solo piano can tell us a lot about quality of reproduction, which I also listened to on the EAR Phono Studio (review) and the Manley. The Parasound’s strengths nearly jumped from the DeVore O/96 along with Argerich’s impossibly perfectly human interpretation, showcasing rock solid imaging and dazzling incisiveness, Argerich’s as performed by Parasound. Nuance, attack, and that beautiful orderly precision that flirts with the mechanical in Argerich’s capable hands, were all laid out, in Barn by the JC 3+ and Co. (i.e. the rest of the system) for the taking. Stunning.

Moving back to the Manley Chinook, this same music was given a bit more sparkle, a bit more light, a bit more magic in the air sensation, as if the notes themselves were lighting up the Barn with pure sound energy. I’m talking about sensation as opposed to things that can be quantified in numbers, how this stirring music effected me as I listened to it. This is the kind of thing that is often relegated to “subtle differences,” as secondary and relatively unimportant factors in the overall picture, as if our emotional reaction to music plays second fiddle to an objective standard or that paying attention to how we feel when listening to music is somehow beside the point. Messy not manly. This is also where the highly personal steps in and brings with it the importance of system context, room context, and of course personal preference. Other voices, other rooms.

I know that picking a “Best” is hugely popular, and the easiest way to draw more traffic to a review or column is to simply put “Best” in the title (really). To my way of living, looking for The Best keeps satisfaction just out of reach, always just one more upgrade away and can, in extreme cases, make music seem secondary to the pursuit (I just checked and this is the definition of ass-backwards). All to say that the Manley and the Parasound offer the kind of quality in reproduction, albeit with different voices, that moves music to the fore and keeps it there for as long and as deeply as you care to listen. Bravo2.

New Wet Kojak announce their intentions with a sax squawk and sexy bass line on opener “Stick Out Your Tongue” from their 1995 self-titled debut album on Touch and Go Records. New Wet Kojak are like a friendlier version of James Chance and The Contortions, rooted in a loose funk as opposed to angry rockabilly. New Wet Kojak is an intimate sounding record, with each player—guitar, bass, sax, drums—standing clearly apart and Scott McCloud’s vocals—spoken, snarled and hushed—sounding like the mic never left his lips. Super snappy dynamic jump factor, the ability to latch onto the subtlest of shifts in tone and texture, and an unwavering rock solid image as produced by the JC 3+ helped to bring New Wet Kojak into the Barn in a manner so convincing I was moved directly into their performance, skipping past audiophile concerns.

an amber glow means mono

I know people like to say that some audiophiles listen to the gear. While there’s some truth beneath the snark, there’s a reason people aren’t equally passionate about laser printers. Hifi, especially good hifi, consistently connects us to music as deeply as we care to go and that is another of the Parasound JC 3+’s standout qualities that became apparent the more time passed and records played. It completely steps aside and lets the music flow.

Big Thief’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You from last year is a masterpiece of comfort, a Big Pink kinda record where the musicians that make up the group sound as if they share the same heart. Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, James Krivchenia, and Max Oleartchik along with a number of guests produce a double album’s worth of sheer pulsing beauty. Acoustic guitar (6 and 12 string), prepared acoustic guitar, brush guitar, nylon-string guitar, electric guitar, fiddle, jaw harp, flute and all manner of percussion add their unique voices to the whole with Lenker’s oh-so-lovely vocals out front. This record blossomed from the O/96 with the Parasound acting as sonic gardener, presenting all of these distinct voices with great clarity and full spectrum color, putting me front row center for the performance. Dragon is rich—damn near kaleidoscopic—in tone and texture, and the JC 3+ was more than up to the task of capturing and conveying each voice while delivering the chugging, joyous dancing rhythm of the whole.

Sonny Rollins Freedom Suite is, as I mentioned in my review of the MoFi StudioPhono, a favorite record that saw near daily play, on cassette, in my painting studio during college. It sounds like an old friend. Rollins on tenor saxophone, Oscar Pettiford on bass, and Max Roach on drums turn time into a sliding scale, wrapping up my thoughts into a twisting, turning tapestry. I own a Japanese Mono repress, which allowed me to try out the Parasound’s Mono switch, which, in ways similar to the changes I heard with the StudioPhono, added more weight and solidity to the presentation. Max Roach’s cymbals stood out through the JC 3+ for their striking shimmering heat quieting to cooler shades as the hit subsides, while the interplay, the groove, and every micro move was revealed in full light.

According to my way of listening, talking about things like highs, mids, and lows is like describing a painting by naming colors used in the mix. It tends to distance the perception, the experience, so far from what matters as to render the thing in question—music or painting—moot. With the Parasound JC 3+ in my system, highs, mids, and lows never came to mind because I was hearing Oscar Pettiford’s bass, a fiddle from Dragon, raunchy sax on Kojak, and so on. Sounds perceived, seamlessly, as the things responsible for making them.

It’s easy to recommend the Parasound JC 3+ because it does a masterful job as part of a reproductive chain meant to make music come alive in our homes. Its sound seems to be wholly comprised of the music you send its way, nothing more and nothing less, turning our cherished slabs of vinyl into energy and its resultant waves of pure delight.


Parasound JC 3+ Phono Preamplifier
Price: $3199
Company Website: Parasound

Specifications

Frequency Response
20 Hz – 20 kHz, +/- 0.2 dB

Total Harmonic Distortion
< 0.01% at 1 kHz

Signal to Noise Ratio, MM
> 87 dB, input shorted, IHF A-weighted
> 78 dB, input shorted, unweighted

Signal to Noise Ratio, MC
> 87 dB, input shorted, IHF A-weighted
> 67 dB, input shorted, unweighted

Interchannel Crosstalk
72 dB at 1 kHz

Input Impedance
MM: 47k Ω
MC: 50 – 550 Ω variable, 47k Ω fixed

Output Impedance
Unbalanced: < 100 Ω
Balanced: < 100 Ω per leg

Input Capacitance
150 pF

Input Sensitivity at 1 kHz
MM: 4mV for 1 V output
MC: 600µV for 1 V output

Total Gain
MM: 48 dB
MC: 64 dB

XLR Pin Identification
1 = Ground (Shield)
2 = Positive
3 = Negative (Return)

AC Power Requirement
Standby: 1 watt
Power On: 12 watts
115 or 230 VAC 50 – 60 Hz
(Selected on Chassis Bottom)

Dimensions
Width: 17-1/4″ (437mm)
Depth: 13-3/4″ (350mm)
Height, with feet: 4-1/8″ (105mm)
Height, without feet: 3-1/2″ (89mm)

Weight
Net: 19 lbs. (8.6 Kg)
Shipping: 26 lbs. (11.8 Kg)

Rack Mount Accessory
HRA 2 (may be purchased separately)