WA73

[analag]

I just unboxed a WA73 and threw it up against two of my designs. An FET with two fixed gain opamps running on +/- 24V utilizing Edcor 1:8 nickel core and 600:600 M6 transfomers, then the REDD47 influenced tube pre. They say the WA73 is in the ballpark in terms of the "Neve" sound, so I bought it. Well it' sounds lightly bigger than the FET due to input transformer saturation which in turn makes it less clean and precise as the FET. Not as fast as the FET either, noisier too. Next up was the tube pre...no contest! I have another solid state pre on the work bench getting done, let's see how it fair against that one. Conclusion...I'm keeping it, I'm not mad at it.

 

[pucho812]

Ok.

 

[analag]

Went up in the belly of the thing. Found 33V coming of the rectifiers into a filter that's rated for 35V otherwise it's a nice build.

 

[ruffrecords]

My colleagues at Neve will tell you that most of the clone builders don't have a clue.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Whoops]

My colleagues at Neve will tell you that most of the clone builders don't have a clue.

What's their opinions on which sections are the cloners failing?

thanks Ian

it's AMS also considered a cloner?

 

[pucho812]

What's their opinions on which sections are the cloners failing?

thanks Ian

it's AMS also considered a cloner?

no, because they own the IP. 

 

[Whoops]

I was really not trying to be ironic,
I could understand completely if a person that worked in Neve during the 1073 and similar modules era would consider the AMS stuff inferior to the original company

 

[iomegaman]

I still have an Art Pro VLA one of the first ones...I think it cost me $500.00 back in the day...it is not an 1176, or a LA-anything...it has its place though...I'm not mad at any of my gear....

I think there's a place for Warm audio...but for the price of a lot of the stuff you can DIY a more authentic version of whatever.