5150 / Mesa clips, Purple Audio Biz pre

[Sly]

Hello folks,

I've done some quick tests yesterday even if as always we didn't have enough time to mess up with gear..

We tried several high end pres on guitars : Purple Audio Biz, A-Designs RED, Great River ME500-NV.
We used a Mesa Dual Rectifier and my Peavey 5150. I brought in my Maxon OD-808 but we didn't have the time to use it unfortunately.

The best sounding pre on the guitars was hands down the Purple Biz. The Great River was cool but too smooth and dark for that kind of modern high gain sound (though we did not try the "impedance" switch, maybe this is the reason why it does not sound so good). The RED pre is a great pre for drums, bass etc but really didn't sound as good as the Purple on guitars.
The Biz have that crispy presence, roaring mids and big tight lows, it's really incredible !!

Here are the raw samples (SM57 tracked twice, one on each side, into the Purple Biz) :

Mesa
http://sylvain.raulin.free.fr/Greggratte/Mesa 57 Purple.wav

5150
http://sylvain.raulin.free.fr/Greggratte/Peavey 57 Purple.wav

The guitar was a Gibson Les Paul Studio from 1993, and the cab a Mesa standard 4x12'.

I think the Peavey sounds really cool, because we had some time to mess up with the knobs. The Mesa sounds a bit muddy because we had to go quick. I think the Mesa would benefit a lot from a Tubescreamer to tighten the low end.
Anyway the settings on the Peavey were :

Preamp gain : 4
Lows : 8
Mids : 1,5
Highs : 5
Poweramp gain : 4
Resonance : 7
Presence : 9,5

 

[J.DavisNJ]

Sounds really good man. Very present like you said!

Any idea which pickups are in the Gibson??

Thanks again for this...Which conversion are you using??

-Joe

 

[Sly]

The pickups were EMG 81.
We used an RME Fireface for this recording.
You'll never be disappointed with the Purple Audio Biz for guitars, it's really amazing, + you can dial in many tones with it, moving the input and output knobs and the "dual" mode. Killer !!

 

[J.DavisNJ]

Cool man sounds great...

Question, how do the two knobs differ? One was gain and one was output from what I remember.

Sorry for the "newb" questions.

-Joe

 

[Sly]

Yeah the higher knob is the input, the lower one is the output.
I like to have the input cranked a bit (let's say around 2 o'clock). It results in a more crunchy sound. If you crank it even more, you'll hear some preamp distorsion happening which can be cool on some sources. I'd say you can dial in the tone you like the most : if you need something airy with not that much coloration, then back up the input, but if you need something that sounds angry and punchy with less headroom (I really like that on guitars personnally) then crank it.
The "dual" mode activates a second gain stage, so it will result in more gain and a good boost in the mids (I guess around 1 khz), I really like it on guitars sometimes, but you have to be careful with that.

 

[J.DavisNJ]

Oh ok I see...

So basically you can crank the gain to whatever you want, and adjust the level actually going into your DAW with the output?

-Joe

 

[Sly]

Yes that's it !

 

[J.DavisNJ]

Rockin...

I have an idea for a new setup actually. At the moment, I really only NEED two simultaneous tracks. I can track guitars, bass, and vocals.

I'm not at the point yet where I can track drums and such. Thinking of an RME ADI-2 for conversion, and two BIZ preamps.

-JOe