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If you're looking for some very high end mic preamps and are handy with a soldering iron I would recommend checking out Seventh Circle Audio. Their range of DIY mic preamp kits range from $79 up to $329. The higher end models offer circuit topology & sonic characteristics very similar to a classic Neve (shown above) or API preamp. Also available is a PSU, wiring harness and rack frame for a completed, 8 channel, professional product.
Bigger purchases get a discount, so for example, 8 Neve preamps with PSU, rack & wiring would set you back less than $3,000 or under $400 a channel. The Cheapskate studio loves that!
Time to return to the Mac platform I guess. Soundflower is a unique, useful & free package that allows audio from one application to be routed internally to another. It has both a 2 channel interface and, as shown here connected to my Metric Halo 2882+DSP, a 16 channel too.
The uses are almost limitless, for example, you can route the output of a player such as iTunes into a DAW, add plug-ins and send to an interface outputs.
Traditionally, guitar players showed up with an amp or stack which was set up in the studio and mic'ed using a variety of techniques. Tweaking that sound became a relationship between the amp settings, the speaker type and the mic brand & position. Back in 1982 Boston's Tom Scholtz changed all this with the introduction of the Rockman which appeared on a thousand records & sparked another thousand debates over amp versus direct.
That argument still rages today with many types of preamp available and a third player, the plug-in. However, purists still believe that the interaction between amp, speaker, air and microphone cannot be replicated. Problem is that traditional guitar amps tend to be costly & need to run loud to get their full sound.
A solution for the astute studio could be the traditional Pignose amp. With a storied history & a price ticket less than $80 it can provide some serious sounds for the small studio. Add some packing blankets, or better still build an isolation box around it, and you can shred all night without waking the baby. Feed it from an aux out of your DAW in conjunction with a free amp simulating plug-in for the best of both worlds.
If you're looking for some very high end mic preamps and are handy with a soldering iron I would recommend checking out Seventh Circle Audio. Their range of DIY mic preamp kits range from $79 up to $329. The higher end models offer circuit topology & sonic characteristics very similar to a classic Neve (shown above) or API preamp. Also available is a PSU, wiring harness and rack frame for a completed, 8 channel, professional product.
