Sony TA-E7B

Here embodied are the 70s in all their solid glory - the TA-E7B was packed with more functions and inputs than one could think of.

Not that they were all necessary but, in true 70s style, the more knobs the better ! Needless to say, it still looks better than the 80s' the more LEDs the better.
Anyway - a business inversely proportional to the TA-N7 sobriety !

Of course, by today's standards, the TA-E7B sports way too much knobs and switches to deserve any kind of 'audiophile' label but, still, when all tone controls and filters are off, there's only one coupling capacitor in the signal path - and if that ain't audiophile bickering...

Not to mention the phono MC input, the gold-plated phono terminals or the very elaborate phono stage... and VU meters with peak, average and sampling/hold modes !

An excellent preamplifier with a nice but hidden servicing touch : the E7B opens up three-fold, back, center and front so that everything remains easily accessible.
The center shield you can see below next to the caps hides the meter board with one single IC : Sony CX-067.

As all "7" units (TA-N7, TA-F7, TA-E7B, ST-A7, EL-7), japanese units were "B" coloured but didn't bear the letter itself on the faceplate... or not always, or not at first.
And the japanese version all look dark grey in the catalogs but are of a real european "B" green-ish shade in the flesh and in the (rare) ads - go figure.

Available in Europe in silver color (TA-E7), a very rare version with the scripting silkscreened and not engraved.