advice on choosing preamp project needed

hello!
i'm searching for a good and not to expensive diy mic/line preamplifier project for small group of diy enthusiasts from slovenia. low cost is important factor because of not good economic situation in our country.
we are mostly runing small daw based recording studios, so preamp needs to be of high qualitiy. some of us have experiences with diy. we were thinking of green pre, api 312 and ssl9k.
what we need is good sounding preamp for various sources, parts must be easy to find, low cost, no tubes, good documentation and not too complicated circuit. any suggestion?
thanks in advance
miha

How do you plan to get high quality without tubes.

analag

i don't think high only tube preamp are high quality.

have you got any suggestion for solid state? i need this.

I would say go for the Green Pre as it is one of the easier semi High quality DYI pre"s out there....I have Just started the very beginning stages of building one and am Just collecting the Parts for it...
You can even get better quality out of it by useing better Opamps...

I have found 2 different versions of the Green pre on the net and one seems to be considerably easier to build than the other so that is the one I am going to try first as I am very new to Electronics.....

Do a google search and you should be able to Find the Info needed to get you started....

Cheers

hi!
did you hear green pre in action? or ssl9k? i need answer from someone that already have this kind of experiences.

tHE GREENS SOUND GREAT, AND THERE'S A TON OF INFO ON BOTH THE CONSTRUCTION AND SOUND IN THE METAS.

Holy caps batman, to lazy to retype.

Did you ever compared it to SSL9K?

[quote author="analag"]How do you plan to get high quality without tubes.[/quote] ... so George's stuff isn't high quality
:roll:

if you have the budget
and need a kit
and for an ease of handling
and still give a few options for setup with different input trafo and opamp choices

I don't think you can go past the Baby Animal from JLM

Green MK1 is cheap and simple and very good for what it is.
Green MK11 is an extention and enhancement of the above
The DOA stuff like the 312 is coll but directly related to the parts you use ... as is the Baby Animal.
The baby animal just gives a few options based around the same idea.
The FETBoy is a different topology to the both of the above as it have the FET for gain ... a cool and different sounding unit.
anything 1290 1272 ... 3 and 2 stages of transistors with lots of characture BUT still subject to parts choices.
SSL9K ... Transistor array and rather clean sounding but I feel the above units are better DIY options ... all depends on your experience.

Anything tubed based will be dependant on availability of parts and your experience to built this stuff.
However you must take the time to try to build at least one and then perhaps more ... you will never know unless you try.

Any of the Mic-pre IC's like the SSM2017 and the others ... good for simplicity and where space is an issue. OK but I think if you are to DIY then aim a little higher.
The 2017 based idea can probably be purchased cheaper from one of the Budget Manufacturers ... save DIY time for the better stuff.

JLM Baby Animal !


Mike

Analag: "How do you plan to get high quality without tubes." Very funny

Minion: "semi high quality"? What are you talking about? The Green pre is amazing if you build it with high quality components (esp. capacitors)

Rotation: I have posted audio samples of the green pre compared with other high quality preamps, using an $11,000 microphone (Sony C800g). I think that should be good enough for you to decide.
Honestly, I love mine to death. Sounds better than my mate's Focusrite ISA428, much wider bandwidth too.

About the SSL 9k - Check out the parts list, I'm think some components are hairy to track down.


You can get the PCBs from PeterC. Nice guy, good to do business with.
(But use these PDFs as your main building referrence: green_pre.pdf
Green_Schematic_V14.pdf
Green_Schematic_Meter_V14.pdf)

I don't know what your definition of 'good' is, maybe a simple circuit based on an INA163 or perhaps even better a THAT 1512 chip will do? I remember having read something about a '5$ diy preamp killing a 1000$ box soundwise' on the net some months ago where it was treated as a 'special secret info' that a simple design with an INA163 sounds quite decent. I haven't tried it myself, but these chips provide nearly all you need to do a preamp, you wouldn't even need a special pcb but could put it on a standart experimental pcb.

Michael

thanks for your replys. now i have better orientation on choosing projects. green pre seems to be good choice for us because it's not expensive and easy to do. and documentation is excellent.
i will propose this to our group and we will se.
thanks again. if anyone has more opinions please tell them.
regards from miha

If you want to "warm up" the DAW, then maybe a less sterile pre would be what you are after.

The chip amps will give you low noise and low distortion, but will not add much character.

The discrete solid state amps will get you a ton of flavor. But you might spend more on transformers.

There is a Langevin AM 16 project floating around here, although it has remained low on the radar screen. We have transformers, we have boards.
But the iron is expensive.

API iron is pretty cheap. At least the output.

I built a couple of preamps using the INA217 (which I *think* was designed as a next generation of the INA163) and I like it very much. It's real simple to build and is very quiet. It's quiet even though I used a outboard power supply from a laptop!

As far as 'sound,' however, I can't judge that since I have no studio experience. Or talent. I suppose the main factor is that there is no input transformer in the design.

hi rotation,

i do wonder about your comment regarding the economic situation in slovenia, i thought its running quite good the last couple of years. :roll:

anyhow, i can suggest a cheap tube preamp circuit of my own, you can leave out the output transformer for recording directly into your daw (10k input).

http://www.groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=14185
for finding tubes etc i can highly recommend visiting flea market.

but of course there are a lot of different possibilities here on the forum.
check the mic pre meta

The ThatMic kit might be a good 1st project:

http://electronics.dantimax.dk/Kits/Preamps_-_poweramps/11380733512.html

http://electronics.dantimax.dk/

There is a group buy for Valley People Transamp modules going on. For $40 in guts plus a case and PSU, you cant beat it with a stick.
Just another option in a sea of options.

Hi IOAUIDO! I already done mullards circuit with two ef86 and ecc82 to match impendances. I used input trafo, but had lots of noise and other unwanted things. Other problem is price of ef86.
I think Baby animal or API (even better) are candidats. I already contacted Bauman (forgot his name) and price seems to be acceptable for us. Someone asked about economic situation here..It's much better than it was, but still not good. We get around 500 euros for one mounth of work, so hmm. I will check out Langevin AM 16. I never tried this pre before, but i will see. If our group agrees i think we will go for API because it's known and there is many different options with trafos and other components. Bauman told me he has cheap output trafo for API. Did anyone ever tried those trafos? Price is very low and guy was very kind with his answers, so if trafos are ok we will buy them.
Thanks again, i'm very surprised by all this replys. Be sure i will post pics and also sound files when we finish. Right now we are constructing GSSL.
Regards Miha

My favorite Slovenian export is Andreja Jelen :grin: