Nearly everyone’s first electronic project is something that blinks a LED. There are a million ways to go about this ‘Hello World’ project of electronic design; 555 timers, microcontrollers, or maybe even discrete components if you’re really cool. When [miceuz] was asked by a friend to help with his first electronic project he eschewed the usual blinking LED project and taught him how to build something he actually needed: a phono preamp for an old turntable.

Back in the day when vinyl was king, albums needed to be mastered to play on a record player. The mastering process cuts some of the bass and increases the treble. When the record is played, this process needs to be reversed. It’s a preamp that does this job by attenuating the high frequency sounds and boosting the thumping bass.

[miceuz] found a nice DIY RIAA preamp  project and found a nice little op amp  somewhere in his parts bin. After laying out the circuit, [miceuz] etched a few boards and taught his friend how to solder SMD components.

Of course the project didn’t work the first time around, but after poking around with a meter and checking out the old turntable, the preamp came to life with the clang of chords from an old record. If you’d like to build your own, you can get the files from [miceuz]’s git.