Phono stage on ebay (stolen trademark)

Given that this vendor has stolen the trademark, you should be automatically suspicious, since he's clearly unethical. The circuit could be anything, the parts could be mystery meat.

I would absolutely avoid this, and anything else offered by vendors who have demonstrated their dishonesty.
 
Thanks for your feedback SY. It did look suspicious for sure, this is why I wanted to know more about it. Regarding the copyright aspect, I did not consider that for first glance. But it does sound logical that a schematic is as protected as any other intellectual property.
 
Don't deal with thieves. It's not only unethical, you are almost certain to be getting crap that has no resemblance to the original. Chances are that the "JC-2" is stuffed with counterfeit parts.

Did I show you my $50 Rolex? I'm sure it's every bit as good as the real thing.
 
In his own words:
By the way, it is not necessary to build a JC-2 line amp from scratch. Just get a completed unit E-Bay online from China. I paid $126 + shipping. The case alone is worth that much................The Levinson JC-2 line stage was designed over 40 years ago, and while quite good at the time, and still one heck of a bargain from China today, is not the latest of this series of designs, but it has all the basic changes that we made to get the best performance in order to exceed what we could get from opamps then, and I still think, today.**
 
PCB

This is how I got it with some parts loosely plugged in. Picture is of the power supply section.
It contains 4 diodes for the high voltage, 1N5374, and a MJE13009 transitor.
The function of the latter is totally unclear to me. despite my request.
The seller did not provide an up-to-date schematic.
 

Attachments

  • img547.jpg
    img547.jpg
    122.7 KB · Views: 651
Last edited:
If this is the circuit that the unethical thieves are selling, there's quite a few improvements that can be done- like most ripoff companies, they seem to be unclear on how the circuit they're stealing actually works.

But first, the RIAA feedback looks incorrect. Is that how the unit is actually wired?