Mic Pre selection opinions

Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 2:20 pm

To make things short, I'm building somewhat of a monster of a home studio. I've been trying to ferret out the best preamp selections possible for my price range, and heres what I've come up with.

I'm looking for about 24 channels of preamps, budget is about $25k

For the completely transparent side, and my main source of preamps, I was looking at 2 Grace m801s. That gives me 16 channels of pristine, clear preamps for anything I need them for.

For the colored, not so clear side, I was looking at the following -

UA LA-610
Drawmer 1969
Great River MEQ-1NV
UA 6176
Focusrite Liquid Channel
Vintech X73i
GT SuPRE

Thoughts? Things I could swap out with equivelants and save cash? Is this a good balance of clear/colored preamps?

Thanks!

Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 3:12 pm

You need some API in there

Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 5:52 pm

checkout the millennia media stuff...i've got their 8 channel hv3d and it rocks...ultra transparent...

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 11:22 am

Crankitup wrote:

You need some API in there

Agreed. $25K and no lunch box? There should be a law... Laughing

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 12:44 pm

I'd throw a True 8 in there instead of 2 Grace.
Secret weapons:
Langevin Dual Vocal Combo
Presonus ADL600 (yes! Presonus...this is one wonderful hunk of metal)
Hamptone

Not so secret:
Avalon 737

+1 on the LA-610, love that one.

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 2:03 pm

No Buzz Audio?

Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 7:06 pm

Lunch box of 1073's and a lunch box of API's.... done.

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 8:33 am

MadMax wrote:

Lunch box of 1073's and a lunch box of API's.... done.

Yeah...I was also wonder where the lunchbox and API was too.

+1 for the Great River and ADL600. Did I see any Pacifica? On the *VERY* colorful side, there's Shadow Hills...the Gamma is a lunchbox format.

Frank

Posted: Wed May 21, 2008 9:32 pm

Maybe its just me - 25k on pres for a home studio?????

I hope you're independently wealthy and not planning on getting your return back anytime soon.

What strikes me as odd is that you're asking advice on an internet forum that you haven't spent a lot of time on and ready to drop significant change on things you may or may not understand.

It's possible you've done your homework and you're trying to narrow down selections, but if you're dropping that kind of money you should definitely HEAR and WORK WITH the units mentioned.

A few hundred bucks spent at a studio that has some of this equipment would be my first order of business.

My .02 (that's $24,999.98 cheaper)

Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:54 pm

The Liquid Channel will provide some interesting results when used with a Tube Mic. I am currently recording a Gospel CD using a Trion 8000 on lead vocals with Liquid Channel using the FLAT mic pre with Red 7 compression. In addition, I am using the digital output going into an Motu HD192. This combination sounds very good.

I rate clarity on a scale of 1 -10 a 10
I rate transparency a 9.5
I rate warmth a 10

Not to mention I have over fifty different combinations of compression and microphone preamp at my discretion. You can not go wrong with this set up.

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