OP-amp/trafo choices?

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Osse

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 2, 2007
Messages
81
Hello Everybody

Sorry for this newb question, but i'm going to get a stereo pair of the Baby Animal mic pre built for me, and I wish to have 2 different characters of it.

I am very picky with sound quality, unfortunently i'm not that good in the electronics, and it would be AWESOME if someone would help me out on this one.

I wish to have one pre with a very agressive, little distorted 3khz focused sound, with a lot of transients, mostly for focused snare and agressive vocals, i'm thinking about the Hybrid op-amp(or maybe DIY Melcor 1731?), in combination with what input trafo?

The other one I wish just to be as detailed as possible, but with some/lots of warmth, and a very straigt/natural freq response, I thought about the Lundahl 1578 input trafo, and maybe the hybrid op-amp here to, or maybe the 990c?

I havn't seen any info if the Melcor 1731, is it available for buying, or is it just DIY? any PCB's around?

Sorry if this is a dumb question, and if it's hard to answer, but this is a tought decision for a newb like me.

Thanks a lot!
Ossian :wink:
 
you seem to be describing what you want from the mic, not the pre regarding the snare channel.
 
How do you mean?

I wish the character of the mic-pre channel to be like this, for a big range of choises when chosing character.
 
many mics have bumps in the 3k area, many mics have power on snares, most pres sound more similar than most mics. especially if they have the same PCB. transformers can sound quite different, but I think it would be more dramatically different auditioning mics.
 
Yeah sure, I know it's a bigger difference between mic's then between preamps, but I still wish for some coloured preamps.

Any suggestions?
 
My favorite preamp for aggressive vocals is the Hampton JFP, aka FETBoy.

The Hybrid Opamps that I have, using JLM14 input transformers, are not nearly so aggressive.

You might want to try the 2520 opamp. It is easy to do a 312-ish config on the baby animal pcb, and 312s get used all the time on snare, vocals, and guitar amps. That's a sound you undoubtedly have heard, and I'd call it aggressive. You might consider using an atypical input transformer for more bite, like the OEP or the Cinemag CMMI-8PCA. My impression is that the typically used inputs smooth things out a bit more.

I would try the Hybrid in your clean channel. Otherwise, the 990 has an impeccable reputation for that sort of thing.
 
[quote author="skipwave"]My favorite preamp for aggressive vocals is the Hampton JFP, aka FETBoy.

The Hybrid Opamps that I have, using JLM14 input transformers, are not nearly so aggressive.

You might want to try the 2520 opamp. It is easy to do a 312-ish config on the baby animal pcb, and 312s get used all the time on snare, vocals, and guitar amps. That's a sound you undoubtedly have heard, and I'd call it aggressive. You might consider using an atypical input transformer for more bite, like the OEP or the Cinemag CMMI-8PCA. My impression is that the typically used inputs smooth things out a bit more.

I would try the Hybrid in your clean channel. Otherwise, the 990 has an impeccable reputation for that sort of thing.[/quote]

Thanks a lot for that answer! gave me a little clearer picture of what to do!
 
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