G9 qualitys

[hejsan]

no one else seems to have noticed what fotis says, Most people agree that the G9 is a very clean and sweet sounding pre.

For funky you should check out some of the solid state meets transformer pre's, 312 types are known to be punchy for example.

good luck,
hejsan

 

[jensenmann]

[quote author="hejsan"]hey, jensenman, what transformers do you have in yours?

thanks,
hejsan[/quote]

I built two different versions. One is with OEP in/out and the other one uses Lundahl out and Haufe input iron. There´s a tube comparison thread around where I posted soundfiles with the OEP G9 and differen tubes.

 

[hejsan]

So which one did you like better, the oep channel or the "cleaner" one?

 

[jensenmann]

The Lundahl/Haufe combination sounds more open and thus is the better choice for Overheads/cymbals or whatever needs nice highend. The OEP comes with warmer lowend and pronounces the body a little more. So what´s my favourite now? I don´t know. Nice to have both optons :grin:

If I only had one of them I guess the OEP would be the first choice because the lowend on the other is a bit thin for my taste.

 

[Luny Tune]

[quote author="Purusha"]Since this pre is so popular I wonder if anyone here did some A/B tests VS some high-end BIG NAME PRE? It would be nice to hear it next to a VOX BOX or something.[/quote]
I've heard a shoot-out between a Wunder PEQ1 and a G9 with OEP's in it. It was a simple test with the gain switch in "just" one position. The result was almost a tie. They sounded VERY similar with the little difference being that the G9 compressed the signal ever so slightly and the Wunder being very very "open" sounding. I wasn't really be able to pick a winner because I believe the difference is actually due to the fact that tyhe Wunder is solid state where the G9 is a tube circuit. They both sound absolutely amazing. If a diy interested guy would like to build himself an excellent preamp I can't think of a single reason not to go for the G9. It's top notch, world class, sits comfortably next to the rest of the best, and so on... Furthermore it's not "only" a preamp. It has an absolutely brilliant DI feature. Until I heard the G9 DI my favorite was a Manley Tube DI which already sounds amazing. Full and rich is the first two words that comes to mind... It has a tube and a tranny and in it's "Full" mode it's really unbeatable on a bass guitar....well, it WAS. :wink: The G9 takes it one step further. The G9 lets you saturate the tube differently over it's various gainpositions and you benifit from that when you use it as a DI as well. You know the annoying click sounds that you can often get from bass players muting strings while playing. Well, the G9 gives you a good deal of control over that phenomenon when you saturate the tubes they will shave off those peaks of the waveform while still maintaining a full a fat sound. You can really work the tubes with this baby. I'm absolutely in love with it. A stroke of genious on Jakob's part. Again! And then he went and made it a diy project..... Somebody pinch me, please!! :shock:

EDIT: I have a Beyer Dynamic input trafo and an OEP output trafo in mine by the way. I think the Beyer Trafo is just slightly more "crispy". Suits me fine. :grin:

 

[Guest]

Luny Tune - do you know the part number of the beyer input transformer you used?

 

[Luny Tune]

Yes. :grin:

Beyer TR/BV 310-210-005

 

[Luny Tune]

You should know that I talked to Jakob E. and Black Dog about the risk of this tranny to drive the following circuit too hard and thereby creating distortion, and they advised me to change the line input to be used as a padded mic input and I also made a fourth position on the input selector switch with pad+p48. But with my Soundelux U195 and other mics I've used I've used the regular mic and mic+p48 input works just fine. No distortion, but it's nice to have the option of padding it further should it prove necessary some time.

Just thought you should know. :wink:

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the info luny ! Can't decide if I should go oep input or beyer ..still ...nice decisions to make!

/Taz

 

[cletus monroe]

Love Mine too! Been using it on everything for over a year now.
Great Bass DI. Wonderful for vocals. Have an Avalon 737 at my disposal
and prefer the G9 over it. To my ears, the Avalon sounds thinner. The
G9 is very smooth.

 

[steppenwolf]

Hi!
Just wanted to post my opinion of the G9 after using it for a few weeks and wanted to know, if you had similar experiences with it.

The first instrument I tracked was a bass guitar directly into the instrument in. The sound is amazing! Very warm yet articulated and the HP filter works great, too if you want to get rid of some bass.

I also used it to track a room mike to record two acoustic guitars in fig8 with my G7. It sounds very intimate and near even though we were pretty distant from the mic. That's something I never experienced with my focusrite saffire;-)

Then I tried to track some electric guitar with just a SM57 in the G9 and into my DIY AD converter.
I recorded a short riff and afterwards pluged into the focusrite and played the same riff again without changing mic position or anything.

Then I compared those to takes and I was literally shocked!!!
I didn't expect the difference to be so overwhelming.
The focusrite take sounded somewhat compressed and if there was a carpet in front of the speaker.
The G9 take was a lot brighter in the midrange but still not nasty at all.
It's has a nice presence and I think it really brings out the guitar in the mix.
A bit less low end I think but that could also be due to the extended high freq response. It also sounds much louder even though the levels are pretty much the same.
Maybe I could post those recordings...

One question:
I once read that the G9 can be a really distorted box but I can't get distortion out of it. Even with the gain on full and the output adjusted with the pot and don't get distortion out of a vocal track.
I mean the sound somewhat gets brighter and more aggressive with higher gain settings but I really can't here real distortion like I had with the focusrite...

Do your G9s behave the same way?
Just curious.
Regards,
Stefan

 

[jensenmann]

[quote author="steppenwolf"]Do your G9s behave the same way?
Just curious.
Regards,
Stefan[/quote]

Yes, exactly how you described it.
I used distortion for recording bass through the instrument input. It worked pretty good for making the sound more creamy (whatever that means). It was an active bass, though. More output level than passiv basses tend to have, so overdriving the input was easy.

 

[kato]

[quote author="steppenwolf"]I mean the sound somewhat gets brighter and more aggressive with higher gain settings but I really can't here real distortion like I had with the focusrite... [/quote]

I think "more aggressive" is often what people mean when they say distortion - not always full-on fuzzbox type of distortion.
:grin:

 

[steppenwolf]

I think "more aggressive" is often what people mean when they say distortion - not always full-on fuzzbox type of distortion.

I just expected to clearly hear the distortion but it is much more subtle then I thought, if you are right. I recorded an acoustic guitar (not distorted by itself)
and got many different sounds out of the pre when turning the gain and output knob. On high gain settings I could hear an increase in presence and overall brightness.
So you would say that this is already due to increasing distortion?
I expected the high end to distort and sound nasty but it just never sounds nasty, it's always smooth!

 

[ChrioN]

My G9 is very clean @ max gain, which is a little bit sad.
Still, a very nice preamp, I got very confused the first time I tried it out, I never though tubes could sound this clean.

 

[craigmorris74]

Makes me want to build the G9. Sounds like the descriptions of the really great hi-fi tube designs.

 

[zebra50]

Craig - Just build one. You won't regret it.

[quote author="ChrioN"]My G9 is very clean @ max gain, which is a little bit sad.
Still, a very nice preamp, I got very confused the first time I tried it out, I never though tubes could sound this clean.[/quote]

Having tinkered with tube mics and preamps for several years now, my perception has completely changed from maybe ten years ago. A well designed and constructed tube circuit will sound extremely clean and quiet.

 

[jensenmann]

[quote author="craigmorris74"]Makes me want to build the G9. Sounds like the descriptions of the really great hi-fi tube designs.[/quote]
I think Jakob mentioned one time that the G9 design is based on a Revox HiFi thingie

 

[jensenmann]

[quote author="zebra50"]Having tinkered with tube mics and preamps for several years now, my perception has completely changed from maybe ten years ago. A well designed and constructed tube circuit will sound extremely clean and quiet.[/quote]
:thumb:
+1
My latest vari mu compressor built lets the Gssl sound like a nasty fuzzbox. A well designed tube circuit knows how to behave.

 

[zebra50]

[quote author="jensenmann"]
:thumb:
+1
My latest vari mu compressor built lets the Gssl sound like a nasty fuzzbox. A well designed tube circuit knows how to behave.[/quote]

Ha! Totally! (Not that there is anything wrong with the GSSL.)

We need to re-educate the public, or at least my studio clients. They expect fuzz from the vari-mu and G9. :twisted:

It's the circuit that gives the fuzz, for silicon and glass alike.

:thumb: