This preamp has been the New York City standard for a long time. It has worked it’s way into every tracking room in every major studio.  I’m not a fan.  After being forced to use it on hundreds of sessions, I’ve gotten good at getting a decent sound out of it.  Honestly I just think that for the doe ($2,200-$2,500) you could get a way better sounding preamp. 

    It has a built in compressor.  The compression sounds small to me, it helps to control signal level when an artist sings loud but it sounds cheap, not meaty and big like an LA2A or similar vintage box.  It has four bands of EQ that I think are just suicide for most rookies.  They start digging through the frequencies and make it brighter, and yeah it gets brighter, but not silky.  Sometimes when I come to the studio I judge other engineers by they’re Avalon 737 settings.  Use your ears, not your eyes, less is more.

    There’s a lot of places on this box where you can mess up a vocal.  The high gain button is not for vocals, it changes the impedence, it’s for recording guitars and bass going direct into the 1/4 inch input on the front of the unit.  Another thing I see a lot is people using the high pass filter and taking all the lows out of the vocal.  Remember that you’re tracking, not mixing, you may want those lows back when you start mixing.

    This box works well on guitars.  I like using it to record acoustics (with mics, not direct).  It works pretty well as a direct box for electrics and bass, but there are way better options in this price range.  The best thing I can say about this preamp is that it’s not noisy.  The worst thing I can say about this preamp is that it’s virtually colorless, it’s boring, it doesn’t sing.

PROS

-very low noise floor

-can be used in many recording applications

-great for acoustic guitars

CONS

-doesn’t sound very musical or colorful, it’s boring on vocals

-expensive