Salvaging onboard mic preamps.

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Anthon

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 6, 2012
Messages
201
Location
Brussels
The summer has just begun - what a perfect time to sit inside and work on diy electronics  ;D

I was thinking about removing the 2x (QPSE XOYO) onboard preamps from my Nagra 4.2 recorder, and making a standalone version out of it (or adapting it to 500 series footprint).

It might be not the most popular preamps, but some sound engineers I know claim that the preamp is what made it so great. I really enjoyed using Nagra III - I was very sceptical of this obsolete technology at the time, but it really blew my mind.
Unfortunately, mine doesn't work so well, mechanically.

The problems I have with it being inside the recorder are 1) no phantom power 2) only a mono output from the Nagra 3) bulkiness of the recorder itself.

It wouldn't hurt the recorder, since the procedure would be reversible (well, unless I do something stupid and destroy it). It seems like they were designed to be easily replaced by other preamps, so no butchering is needed.
Also, Nagra has a dedicated line input - so it would still be functional as a line recorder.

I wonder if anything tried anything similar. What are the complications of doing something like that? If it holds well against other preamps, I might even try to reverse engineer it.

Edit: ok, I don't know why I posted it in the microphone forum, I was pretty sure it was preamp section. Sorry for that.
 
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