The Steel Guitar Forum

Earnest Bovine wrote:

Tony Prior wrote:John, do I see a missing knob in that photo ?

If it's missing, how could you see it?

Earnest , I have "PHOTO" vision...

Mark van Allen wrote: John's wall o' fun...

Ha ! I have lately found collecting rack gear is almost as much fun as collecting Telecasters !

To Marks point, even lo-end gear ( quiet of course) will provide some very nice results for those of us in the home studio world, tracking for ourselves and a few clients/demo's here and there. At the end of the day the guy/gal turning the knobs still needs two good ears and the person playing the music needs to play the best they can... I have not yet run across a preamp with an "improve performance" knob

Now that Mark mentioned the VLA, my mind is now wandering once again but I am currently of the opinion that the DBX386 Dual Channel system , although twice the price of the VLA , may offer a bit more flexibility, given it has full EQ, Compression and De-Esser...but certainly a fine unit for the cash. I think the biggest drawback to the lower priced preamps and such is they use the cheapest tubes they can find..spend $25 or $30 for a pair of tubes and there is a marked improvement.

You have to be careful with "tube" equipment. Many use the starved plate (low voltage) tubes which basically are just buffers and not tube "amplifiers".

I had a Presonus BlueTube DP two channel mike preamp that had a 12AX7 in it, but as it turned out it was the low voltage type and really didn't do anything positive for a vocal. I dumped it for the ART Pro MPA II which has a high voltage mode, much better.