The Value of Mic Preamps

[Jind]

While my experience is very limited, I would tend to agree that on high gained guitars/distorted guitars, the preamp of choice has less importance than in other situations such as vocal recording where I do think you can hear the quality of the preamp come through,especially in truly sung vocals.

I'm happy with the built in pres on my Edirol interface for guitars, I have however been looking at mid priced preamps or channel strips lately for vocal duty. Perhaps in the new year.

 

[MetalJonesy]

i'll have to chime in saying ive had better results with my ART pre on guitars than a neve 1073, even on overheads, the art suits that sound better.

i was going to get a new pre or an SM7 and at the end of the day, the mic is gnna make much more of a difference than a new pre.. so SM7 i shall have (when i get my claim through)

 

[Trevoire520]

talking about the impedances, at the moment im using about 2kohm on my art pro MPA, do u rekon its worth knocking it down? i just find the top end then goes away and im not sure on an optimal setting, ideally im wanting to capture as much of the original freq spectrum as poss, but is it worth it for 57s for example?

like i said im on about 2kohm, and the difference between that and 3kohm is basically non existent, but say the difference between 3k and 800 is huge..

From what I have read the difference is more pronounced with 57's and 58's as they are quite old mic's and were designed back when most consoles had low impedance mic pre's due to dynamic mic's being more common (as condensers were very expensive until fairly recently.
With condensers getting cheaper and therefore more common most modern console mic pre's are higher impedance now as it makes them play nicer with condenser's.

Best thing to do is try it out on your own gear and decide for yourself if it's worth doing. Reamp a clip through each setting, try to match the gain as closely as possible for each, and then normalise to make sure they're the same level. Have a listen and see what you think.

 

[sentinel72]

I once tried to compare the SPL Track One (single channel preamp with lots of tweaking) with just gain adjustment and the cheapo 8 channel SM Pro Audio preamp. I recorded my unplugged hollow body guitar with Röde NT5 and split the signal using an Y-cable and tried to match the input level as near as I could, both went into RME Multiface:

http://www.ahjteam.com/upload/smproa...rackone-01.wav

On the clip, which side is which preamp?