Avalon vt737sp

[Trep]

Soo im thinking its about time for me to get myselft atleast ONE awesome Pre
and this is what ive been gassing for ages

beforei make the plunge, has anyone had any extensive experience with this baby?

Pro's Cons, Likes dislikes comments

 

[006]

I have! I used one every day at the first studio I worked at, mostly voice over, ADR and narrating work was done there though. When I left I bought myself one and used it on every single project during my first freelance stint. Brought it with me to the studio I worked at next, a friend's, where we did only music, hardcore/metal/grind/punk/rap/jazz/blues/acoustic/country/death metulz/black metal...you get the idea. Every project had vocals going through that. I did get use out of it on guitar cabs more than a few times. Also on snare quite a bit, for demos we would use it's channel strip to EQ and compress it a little on the way in, etc. On high-hats and rides, it wasn't like it was a one-trick pony at all. Nice and warm. I have regretted selling it ages ago every time I wish I had one nice outboard pre to do vox or guitar on. For the money, you are getting what you pay for and then some IMO.

 

[greyskull]

meh.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Not very colored.

 

[egan.]

It's neither as bad as it's critics might say nor as great as it's proponents would have you believe. It's pretty clean which is good and bad. It stacks very well, but doesn't have a lot of character.
Honestly when I was first getting to lay my hands on nice gear I chose the avalon over a 1073 in an audition. I think I was really drawn to how pristine it sounded. As I've gotten older and recorded more though I've really come to value distortion and coloration a lot more.

 

[lolzgreg]

I used one of those with the huge channel strip with a Neumann in a recent project. I'll tell you I wasn't particularly thrilled. I agree with egan on the whole coloration thing and preamps.

 

[Trep]

So for the Guys that arn't that fussed about it, What else would You reccomend.

btw Thanks 006

 

[egan.]

Do you need/want a full strip or just a pre?

 

[axeman720]

If it sounded as nice as it looked, i'd like it more. There is WAYYY better channel strips for the money.

I'd take an ISA 430 over an avalon any day... cleaner, bigger and the eq and comps are much better. Especially the EQ. ISA eq is fucking fantastic. There is vintech, great river, api, manley, gml tons of companys make a better sounding channel strip to me.

737s are like the standard bling for commercial studios... i really dont think they are that great and most people have em to please clients. Like the big soffet monitors..."client pleasers". But usually the soffets blow, and so do avalons IMO. haha. I'll use em for room mics or something... but thats about it.

 

[akarawd]

It's down to personal taste -

but for me, the greatest preamp is the one that you can't hear it's there. Actually that's why preamps were built in the first place, to match impedances, reject unwanted noise, capture a sound in its purest form. Add as much coloration and distortion as you want later on unless you decide a certain sound is what you're after.

In any case, if this is your first decent preamp, your recordings will sound 101% better.


Regards,
akarawd

 

[Trep]

Hmmm Yeah i See

I would Prefer a Strip than Pre alone. However if a Pre or a set of Pres came up at a good price and the Upper end of the scale i would still take it