Poll 100 engineers on their favorite tools, and you’ll probably get 100 different answers.
What we often fail to realize is that we are indeed in show business, and that often a product will have more “show” than substance to it’s capabilities.
There are a myriad of myths that permeate our industry, certain tools are for certain applications, “X” is incapable of doing a decent job on a “Y” kind of sound, etc.
Besides the normal subjectivity selection, we have to realize that all of these various tools have to work together as a cohesive unit to obtain any (desired) result. Just as you’re not going to have the same ‘tuning’ on a system in football stadium as you would with a system in a soft seat venue, it’s also true that often, outboard preamps will work better in some venues as opposed to others.
The whole is always the sum of its parts, and the various parts seem to change from night to night, show to show. Perhaps the musician is playing differently than the night before, perhaps the venue evokes need for a different set of textures, perhaps you (the operator) have a different impression of how to present the performance on any given evening.
With all of this said, skip the grain of salt and instead pick up a huge bag of it as you peruse the following views regarding a selection of mic preamps. While some of these assessments may turn out to be of use to you, they may be relatively useless for your applications, tastes, aesthetics and etc.
Much like 1,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean, take these evaluations simply as a “start.” Just as there will inevitably be more lawyers to take the place of our drowned friends, so too with preamps.
And each of you will come to your own conclusions about what hardware is cool and what isn’t for your musical aesthetic, regardless of my or anyone else’s experiences and opinion.
Fletcher is long-time moderator in the ProSoundWeb RE/P forums.