Tandberg TCA 3008A

Vintage Preamplifier

$449

All pre-owned product is tested in our service department and have been passed for sale... and comes with a 90 day warranty!

In nice condition. Original box and packing are NOT available, but we will pack carefully. Last image is an overview and the specs. Sorry, that this unit was not fully cleaned before the pix were taken.

Circa 1984-85. Made in Norway. Tandberg products typically offer the level of performance and quality of construction for which certain extremely expensive “high end” audio components have been noted, but at prices just above those of the better mass-market products. For instance, all the audio stages use polystyrene dielectric capacitors and metal-film resistors (with 1 percent tolerances in critical circuits). It is felt by some audio designers that the dielectric absorption of the more commonly used electrolytic capacitors causes a loss of detail in the reproduced sound, hence their preference for low-loss capacitors whose dielectric absorption is typically 500 times less than that of electrolytic types. For lower capactiance values, most manufacturers use ceramic capacitors, whose capacitance changes with the applied voltage (including the signal voltage itself). Taking the position that the phase shift introduced by such capacitance change can affect the sound, Tandberg uses only stable polystyrene capacitors instead of lower-cost ceramic units throughout the TCA 3008A. In addition, the entire audio section of the preamplifier uses discrete transistors (no IC chips).

The TCA 3008A’s “mother board,” on which almost all the circuitry is located, has been completely redesigned from that in the TCA 3002A. Layout revisions have reduced stray coupling between circuits, and many of the actual circuits differ from those of the TCA 3002A. Almost all of the surface on the mother board not occupied by circuit components or conductors is covered with a conductive “ground plane” that is said to reduce hum, noise, and stray coupling even further. According to Tandberg, the moving-coil (MC) preamplifier section was also modified for optimum performance with medium-output cartridges.

Like other Tandberg products, the TCA 3008A is finished in black with white panel markings and bright metal knobs and pushbuttons. A group of four tape-control buttons select playback from tape 1 or tape 2 or cross-connect the decks for dubbing from either machine to the other. Other buttons are used for power on/off and to select the infrasonic filter, tone-control defeat, mono/ stereo mode, and loudness compensation. The headphone jack on the front panel has an independent volume control. Other small knobs operate the bass and treble tone controls (each has eleven detented positions), adjust balance (center detented), and select the program source. Besides the two tape decks, inputs include a tuner, CD player, MM phono, and MC phono. The main volume control is a large knob. A red LED pilot above each pushbutton lights when it is depressed.

On the rear of the preamplifier, besides the various signal input and output jacks, there is a pair of three-position toggle switches. These select MM phono-input terminations of 33,000, 47,000, or 100,000 ohms and shunting capacitances of 20, 120, or 350 picofarads. There are three switched a.c. outlets, with a total capacity of 300 watts, and there is a single unswitched outlet.

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