Why does this pre-amp SUCK!

Cedub and I were sitting in the studio talking about the current level of power required by our Shure 57s. The 57 is the workhorse of the industry and to this day is often the first mic put on a speaker cab for a guitar (next to the 421), we love ‘em and use them all the time.

The problem with the 57 is that you need a strong pre to make them get the level output that you want into your board. Unfortunately we only have one Amek dual-channel pre and this means that if we want more the then two 57s (or any other mic) then we have to use the pre’s built into the D8B.

Sadly, the D8B’s pre’s are weak and don’t give us the level we want on the 57’s unless you are mic a kit, then a snare or tom will rip through just fine. We have been seeing this issue come up a lot with the interview segments of the show because we often need three mics to get our round table discussions.

The last session our levels were so low (and we had them cranked) that I had to end up doing some crazy compression meets limiter magic to get them to sound decent. Luckily it was just conversation, so you can compress the shit out of it and it still sounds passable (especially at 96kbps MP3).

These kinds of discussions only head in one direction, what kind of crazy cool gear do we need to get in the future. The answer is of course a rack of 8 to 16 Neve class-A (or equivalent) pre’s. We have the rack space and it’s located in a convenient place so we can access and adjust with ease from the board. This will allow us the head room we need and also give us more super clean and clear channels for mic-ing the kit and other requirements.

This also fits into our future replacement board which will more then likely be a controller instead of the mixer/control combo. Other worthy investments will be Apogee level DACs and we need a Big Ben or something like it pretty soon too. Mmmmm… word clock. Anyway, we need more pre’s… MORE PRE’SSSSSSS…