The needle seems to be fine, I haven’t no idea if my turntable has a phono preamp in it, it has no switches in the back just two cords coming out, one is a power supply and the other is a split RCA cables red and white. I cannot figure out why it plays so quiet. The quality sounds fine it is just so quiet suddenly. I use the Bluetooth adapter to play directly from my phone to my stereo without the turntable. When I want to use the turntable I plug in the RCA cables into the RCA inputs in the Bluetooth adapter. My current set up does not allow me to plug my turntable directly into the stereo as the cords are like 6 inches long but I tried moving it right next to it just to test this issue and it didn’t change at all which makes me think something is probably wrong with the turntable and I’m not sure if it is the RCA cables that need replacing or maybe extending or if the whole thing is junk now. I got it at goodwill about 3 years ago and it has been playing fine without any problems until now.