ART MPA Gold Microphone Preamp
The fundamental preamp I ever bought was an ART Tube MP. It was piercing and picked up WBOS, but when I could get it to reconcile I could get an okay sound out of it for $30. Lately, I've seen a few threads around people putting good tubes into low end microphone preamps with pleasing results. One preamp with which people had mixed but interesting results was the ART MPA Gold. Different from many of ART's other products, the MPA isn't a craving-plate low voltage device. Spring, let's just say that it has a high charger voltage setting which is obvious in its effect on the sound. This reminds me of the new Joemeeks: they're okay as is, but when you take on the "Iron" button, you've got yourself a extremely good piece of gear for not a lot of filthy lucre.
The tubes with which the ART MPA comes with are terrifying. They only say "China 12AX7B" on them. 'Nuff said. You can do gamester with almost any old $8 replacement tube. I went with a $19 JJ/Tesla 12AX7 (or "ECC83S") for one way of the MPA, and with a $29 Tung Sol 12AX7 for the other (each with gold tips). Both are newly made tubes and survey decent: they certainly produce the MPA a workable preamp with some merit tone. The Tung Sol really works graciously with my Heil PR40 microphone, but I will indubitably upgrade the JJ to a GE NOS tube in the near to be to come.
What I really like there the MPA is that for $300 you get two channels with quantity of clean gain and each has their own sweepable foremost pass filter and their own sweepable input impedance (up to 3k). The Heil PR40 is a definitely bright mic, and sometimes it needs to be slowed down a adjoin to a 2k impedance even though that's against the recommended ratios. With condensers, the sweepable impedance isn't as noted as it is with dynamic microphones that I like to use.
My Be fulfilled Systems P-Solo has been replaced. While that part is fantastic for guitars (both as a DI and for micing acoustic guitar) the ART MPA Gold is working for me, and I'm getting comments on my feeling and more...
