Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

ratherdashing

ratherdashing

Kablamminator
I've got a Presonus Firestudio 2626 with eight mic pre's on it. It's a great unit with nice AD conversion, and the pre's are pretty good on the whole. However, after experiencing the glory of running UA and Neve pre's into the Firestudio, I do think that there are quite a few situations where I'd like to have something really cool, or at least different, to use as a mic pre in my home studio.

Here is the bullet point summary of my needs:

- one or two channel
- ability to handle a variety of mics (dynamic, condenser, ribbon)
- not heavily coloured, but not sterile either
- used primarily on vocals, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar
- phantom power
- ADAT out a nice-to-have, but not essential
- affordable, but not junky

If money were no object, I'd get a Chandler Abbey Road or a UA 2-610, but I don't really feel like selling a kidney right now.

What have you guys used?
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

TwilightOdyssey said:
But not very good ...
Click to expand...

Eh, he said bang for buck. Truthfully, I'd go the simple, original Tube MP. Just a tube and a pretty quiet pre. I have a Behringer one, and it was pretty ok. If you are talking about nicer studio level units, there are a TON. Avalon makes some cool stuff.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

TwilightOdyssey said:
Hmm, when it comes to bang-for-the-buck, I really like the Golden Age Project Pre 73. It is a Neve 1073 clone. I have two of 'em.

http://www.zenproaudio.com/goldenagepre-73.aspx
Click to expand...

You had me at Neve 1073. That's really cool. Thanks!

trevorus said:
ART Tube MP Studio V3. Simple, easy, inexpensive.

http://www.artproaudio.com/products.asp?type=79&cat=1&id=58
Click to expand...

I had an ART Pro Channel for a while. I never really liked it much. The best application I found for it was to overdrive a kick drum. Since it had such low headroom it clipped quite nicely. Not exactly the kind of thing you want in a standard mic pre, however.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

You said "ability to handle ribbon mics" so I don't think anything listed so far has that ability (maybe the Golden Age has the gain?). I'd build some SCA preamps, but I don't know what your budget is, so I'm not sure if that's out of your price-range or not.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

Jolly_Rancher said:
You said "ability to handle ribbon mics" so I don't think anything listed so far has that ability (maybe the Golden Age has the gain?). I'd build some SCA preamps, but I don't know what your budget is, so I'm not sure if that's out of your price-range or not.
Click to expand...

Ribbon is low on the priority list. If the Golden Age is truly a Neve clone I'm sure it would do fine. In any case, there's always the Cloudlifter for situations like that: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/CL1Cloud/
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

ratherdashing said:
Ribbon is low on the priority list. If the Golden Age is truly a Neve clone I'm sure it would do fine. In any case, there's always the Cloudlifter for situations like that: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/CL1Cloud/
Click to expand...

That certainly looks like a handy contraption...

I'd use the term "clone" lightly as neve's are all about the perfectly manufactured components and all that jazz, and this golden age is made overseas somewhere with some unknown transformers. However, they're supposed to be pretty good for the money. Even better than that Pre-73 might be this:

http://www.zenproaudio.com/truesystemsp-solo.aspx
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

FMR Audio makes a preamp they call a 'Really Nice Preamp'. It's a solid quality 2-channel preamp that sounds very good . . . but doesn't have any bells and whistles:
http://www.fmraudio.com/rnp.htm

One of my friends makes beautiful classical recordings of local groups with it. It's ugly, but is probably the best bang for the buck preamp that I've heard.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

The Golden Age has 80 dB of gain; plenty for a ribbon mic. The True is a very nice piece, I have one, but it's very transparent. You cannot drive the input transformer like you can on the GA. To me, bang for the buck means you get MORE than $1's worth of performance from every Dollar you spend. The Real Nice Preamp is supposed to be quite good but I've yet to try one.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

for vocals,
I used the Line6 Studio interfaces podfarm and got good results, I also like the plugin voxango voxformer for compression and tone
$100 for podfarm gx silver (on sale)
$40 for voxango plugin
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

GuitarStv said:
FMR Audio makes a preamp they call a 'Really Nice Preamp'. It's a solid quality 2-channel preamp that sounds very good . . . but doesn't have any bells and whistles:
http://www.fmraudio.com/rnp.htm

One of my friends makes beautiful classical recordings of local groups with it. It's ugly, but is probably the best bang for the buck preamp that I've heard.
Click to expand...

I have actually used and heard results from those RNPs - while I was taking Audio Engineering classes at Virginia Tech.

Our professor hated them, because they boggled him with how good they sounded and performed. He was big into every little detail of preamps, and he told us that he "hates the RNP because it causes tens of thousands of dollars of gear to collect dust."

He was not just a hack local engineer, either.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

If it helps, I've read that the Pre-73 is very coloured and the RNP is very clean. Almost opposite ends.

The Black Lion Auteur is apparently somewhere in the middle-ground between the Pre-73 and RNP.

I'm also in the market for the same thing; a simple no fuss pre of professional quality for the most competitive price. I've sifted through numerous threads at gearslutz and you can go crazy trying to reach a consensus. Someone is always going to chime in and state that you could spend more money for that extra sparkle, clarity, thump, punch, detail .etc.

If you're obsessive enough to care about that hairs difference in the grand scheme of your recording chain, then the Great River ME-1NV is apparently exceptional quality without having to shell out 2-5K for serious high-end gear. I've seen them on ebay for under 1K used. Though, I'd personally save more of my cash towards some great microphones.
 
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Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

The cheapest and highly recommended at pro audio forums would be the M-Audio DMP3 much better then the starved plate tube designs (as the money goes into good preamps not gimmicks) and can be had under 200 US. Better then that the MPA Gold or MPA Pro 2 (i think thats what it is called) are ART preamps but run at proper voltage with 2 12AX7s I think and have an input impedance control.

Above that the RNP and Grace Designs pres are in that level and then beyond that your in the higher end (from 1500 upwards). You can get some great pres second hand for around 1000 I would think but if your looking well under that I wouldn't go for less then the DMP3.
 
Re: Good bang-for-buck mic pre?

Most of the recommendations so far (save for the Auteur, Golden Age, or RNP) will be perceivably better than your stock pres.

How handy are you with a soldering iron? SCA makes some of the best mic pres period, and happen to be dirt cheap.

The GAP-73 isn't a straight 1073 clone, but it's got that flavor. You'll have to replace the transformers and do a couple component swaps to get it in the right ballpark, but it's certainly not a bad preamp.

I'd personally look into SCA, though. For $400, you can get the chassis/PSU and one of their T15 kits, which is a transformerless, ultra-clean preamp (similar to RNP, Trident S20, etc). Or, for $600, you could get the same setup but with their API 312 clone (which comes pre-built, actually). After the initial chassis/PSU/1channel, it's about 300/channel for API/Neve/Millenia clones, and $100/channel for the T15's I mentioned. Everything is kit-based except for the API pre, which now comes pre-assembled.

They also have a dual DI module and a DBX-style compressor module that are really cheap and sound great, which makes it really easy to set up some channelstrip style chains on a single unit.
 
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