Preamp Comparison: Golden Age Pre 73, Profire 2626, and Presonus Digimax D8

J

JGolden

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Aug 29, 2009
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Here's a quick shootout of the preamps mentioned in the thread title. The test is a re-amped clip of guitars that went through the following chains. Fender Telecaster Custom w/EMG 81 in the bridge, into the Profire 2626 instrument input with a 6 foot Monster cable. The re-amp chain was a Radial ProRMP>Maxon OD808>Peavey 6505>Avatar 4x12 Contemporary with V30s>Shure SM57.

Golden Age Pre 73
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1868665/GoldenAgePre73.mp3

M-Audio Profire 2626
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1868665/Profire2626.mp3

Presonus Digimax D8
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1868665/PresonusDigima:rofl:8.mp3

Or, you can download this zip file with the clips in there.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1868665/Archive.zip
 
Golden Age Pre 73 for me. Really warm and would be less ear fatigue with a long tune.

Maudio had some upper mid fizz. Presonus was nice and balanced.
 
Presonus sounds a bit dark to me, though it could just be the other two pre's brighter characters making it seem like that.
M audio as fyn said has a bump in the upper mids that makes it sound brighter at first, but the higher frequencies still aren't quite there compared to those upper mids.
Surprised at how bright the GAP is, thought it would be a more warm kinda sound but it's actually got a great clarity to it, also seems to be a slight scoop there. And the lows are nowhere near as cloudy as the other two. I really need one of these.
 
Sounds like the PRE73's got more output gain than input going on - it sounds pretty tame compared to when I used it.

M-Audio had some slight muddiness going on, but I was suprised how little difference there was in all 3
 
No surprise here I guess.
73>>2626>>D8

The D8 sounds almost as if there some impedance mismatching going on - the lows are not controlled at all and it brings out a certain boxiness in the mids.

The 73 has the tightest low end, the least unwanted mids and the most balanced overall sound.

The 2626 seems to be right in the middle between the other two preamps.
 
Guess it's my headphones. I'm not hearing any significant differences. Would be interested in some clean guitar or drum examples.
 
Yeah, I was surprised that even though there were differences, they weren't as drastic as I'd suspected them to be. Tom is correct though, the output is at about 4 o'clock and input at 12 o'clock. I didn't figure that for heavy distorted guitars it would benefit much from additional preamp overdrive. I'll try to get together some DI tracks later for a blind test with a clean sound instead.
 
Jarkko Mattheiszen said:
Really not a big fan of the 73. Could work in another context, but based on that comparison, it wouldn't be my choice for modern hi-gain guitars. Too muffled and soft.
Click to expand...

Honestly? That's not what I heard at all. It's what I expected considering I'd read that the GAP is meant to be a warm, vintage sounding pre, but I didn't find that at all.

Mind you, I've only listened on headphones (ATHM50's) so maybe I'd hear it differently through monitors.
 
^ Agreed. Are you sure you didn't mix up the filenames somehow while you were listening? What you say about the 73 is pretty much the opposite of what I'm hearing in this comparison.
 
Haha, it happens! :)

Your description does fit the digimax quite a bit more than it fits the 73, so I suspected that's what happened.
 
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