best affordable mic pre's

[jon sutton]

(if there is such a thing)

i swear this is the last gear question i will hit you guys with for a while.

i noticed that there is a slew of under $200 mic preamps on the market today.

meek mq3
bellari
dbx
smpro
presonus
art
akai
m-audio
rolls
behringer
tube works

does anybody have any experience with any of these.
please don't tell me to save up and buy an avalon. just plain not an option. i would buy another les paul (or a prs) before i did that.

i have an engineer friend who had heard good things about the bellari and has a meek but thats about it.

[J. FO]

i have a presonus blue tube, it sounds pretty good for the money. i run my drum overheads through with good results. i've also heard a lot of good things about all things meek, so look into that.

[jon sutton]

cool

can you tell the diffence in the prosonus above the digi pres?

[VincePro]

Can someone tell me what tonal qualities actually change when different preamps are used, all other things equal? Texture? Volume? Vocal presence? The more specific you can be, the better....Thanks!!

[Bloux]

Jon,

At this price your not gonna notice alot of differences, just opinions. I'm a singer first, so my opinion will stem from that stand point.

i did not like the blue tube, stereo was cool, but the sound was too hollow for me (tunnelish)

the bellari single mic pre sounded great, not stereo though.

the Art Tube Pac (is the mic pre/compressor combo) mic pre section sounded great, but has a terrible compresser section way too basic for vocals. (too squashed sounding)

If your not interested in a stereo piece just get the Art tube mp for $80.00 bucks or less. the tubes sound made a huge difference especially for accoustic guitars, anything miked, or vox.

you can also pick up the art tube leveler compresser for lees than the mic pre and have both for a buck and a half. (seperate tube mic pre and tube compressor)

or get two art tube mps and use the compression in PT (plugins)

I think the ART and Bellari stuff sounds great for the dough.

good luck my friend

[vonbleak101]

Hi i recently bought the focusrite trackmaster about $550 US and it rocks. It has a clean smooth preamp, a nice subtle eq section and a decent compressor. Nothing amazing about it, just a really good, above average channel strip.

Avoid the DBX Channel strips! There Mini-Pre is also amazing for the price, about $180 US, justa simple Mic/Line Pre, that can be used as a tube DI if/when you upgrade, thats what i did! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Hope this info helps

[Bloux]

Originally posted by vonbleak101:
Avoid the DBX Channel strips! [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Von,

can you elaberate on why not the dbx 376 channel strip? I'm curious on your take.

thanks

[H-man]

Jon- you should save about 20 grand and pick up a console loaded with Neve preamps!!! Ok, kidding aside, I use a couple of ART Tube MP's and I actually really dig them. I use them alot to record my bass direct and actually get a pretty nice tone. They do add a little of color to my vocals too in a good way and really have a low noise level. I would suggest picking up a pair and you will still spend under $200! Stay away from the blue tube, I have also heard that it sucks. Good luck and Happy Recording [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[gracejames]

For that price, i would definately go Meek.

[jon sutton]

Originally posted by minimoog:
stay away from pre-sonus and behringer like the plague as they do as good a job of amplifying a microphone as my dog's turds would.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">so what would you let a pair of turds go for?

(i'm still laughing from the visual image (plugging xlr into the turd) from the first read of your message) 8)