GEAR REVIEWS
GEAR REVIEWS
DAN ALEXANDER CLASS A MIC PREAMP
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Every few days people call me and ask me what preamp to buy, what’s best for the money. I tell them to get the dan alexander preamp. They never buy it, they go and spend twice the doe on a boring sounding avalon because that’s what they see in studios. This preamp sounds harmonically amazing and each channel only has two knobs!!!! Perfect!!! Most people don’t have a good understanding of what all the knobs on a complex channel strip do. They turn the knobs while monitoring in a improperly tuned room and they destroy their recordings. My advice to people doing project studio recording is to get a very solid, simple chain.
This is a Neve 1073 knockoff without the EQ. THIS IS THE ONLY NEVE 1073 KNOCKOFF THAT I CO-SIGN. This is the secret weapon of a small few of the biggest selling pop/rock artists in the world, dead serious. I know grammy award winning producers that did a blind mic preamp comparison test (we call it a mic pre shootout) and everyone in the room chose this preamp on vocals over the Neve 1073 ($5,000), and I repeat, it was a blind test. They chose what sounded the best.
The only bad thing I can say about this preamp is that it’s noisy. In most cases it gives the song a nice analog feel, it can even help the recording. The only time I see the noise becoming a major problem is if you feel the need to stack 60 tracks of vocals on a hook, then the noise could multiply and affect clarity. My advice would be to buy this box anyway and stop using so many damn tracks on your hook......who’s gonna sing all those tracks at the show?????
This preamp works for almost any application like singing, rapping, recording drums, recording guitars, or recording bass. It has the instant vintage tone of a 1073 but it has it’s own flavor, I can’t believe more studios don’t have this box.
PROS
-2 top quality preamps for $1400...wow
-extremely easy to use
-great for vox, guitars, bass, and drums
-instant vintage sound
-creates great harmonics
CONS
-noisy (may just be the 2 units I tested)