Many amplifiers and receivers (a receiver is an AM/FM tuner and amplifier built in the same piece of equipment) have phono preamps built into them.
Like all components of a stereo system there are significant variations in quality in the preamps, which has significant effects on the quality of the playback of your records.
Preamps can be purchased as a separate stand-alone component for as little as $20 or you can spend $3000 or more! It should be obvious by now that a phono preamp is really, really important for proper playback of vinyl records. So let’s discuss preamps for a while.