Preamp clipping shootout

[Wisheraser]

Here are 3 clips of a transformer-based pre. One of them is driven lightly, one is driven hard, and the third is driven extra hard with a shure attenuator dropping the output an extra 15 dB. Which do you prefer?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3450474/Sneap TS and Pre shootout/Overdriven Pre 1.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3450474/Sneap TS and Pre shootout/Overdriven Pre 2.mp3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3450474/Sneap TS and Pre shootout/Overdriven Pre 3.mp3


PS: I tried to level match the files as best as I could, but they may still be a little different.

 

[Wisheraser]

Alright, there doesn't seem to be much interest in this so here are the answers:

1 = driven hard
2 = driven lightly
3 = driven extra hard

I liked 2 the most also. In this case, given that I now notice that the tone is a bit overgained to begin with, any extra gain/saturation from clipping the pre is just too much. Driving it extra hard seemed to kill a lot of the high end too. It may be a different story if I turned the amps gain down a bit though.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

I would have to say that I liked the veavily distorted clip better although I like to stay away from clipping the preamp if it isn't an all tube pre. IMO SS saturation is generally bad, but in this case it was a mild improvement to saturate a bit.