Karaoke Forums

Update on the ART Pro Channel mic preamp:

I've had this thing a couple of weeks now and some time to fool with it. I am REALLY impressed with the effect it has on vocals. Man, it makes a SM58 sound like a million dollar mic! Even my cheap-o mics sound three times as good as before.

At first I tried patching it in tru line input, then instead brought it in via insert return(first click on TRS jack-don't insert it fully, just to the first click) The insert return circuit bypasses the mixer preamp so that way you ain't preamping an already preamped signal....WOW! I wish you could hear the difference a quality mic preamp makes even when live!

I want another one of these things...I will run them full time, not just for recording.

Now I'm shopping for a quality outboard reverb/fx. I prefer a dual channel unit. Lonman suggested the Lexicon 550. I haven't taken time to look at it, but I will right now...

I'm running out of rack space, tho....So please tell me if an outboard FX makes as big a difference as the mic preamp does. The Behringer builtin FX seems to sound ok and doesn't add any noise, but I'm always open to improvement and suggestions. So fire away please!

Nother immediate update:

I just ordered the Lexicon MX200 from Sweetwater....Just got off the phone with them! Those guys are SO cool. My salesman explained the 200 was everything the 550 was, except it didn't have the compressor which I don't need as I already have one in the ART unit....Turned out he uses one himself, so he explained some of the really nice features built into the unit...It has the ability to store presets which makes it really easy to shift FX for different songs/singers...It also has the ability to combine 2 FX into just a single mic input or work single FX on 2 mics.....So that's cool.....That means I can have 3 FX if I use the mixer FX and the Lexicon at the same time.....This is going to be fun!

It will be here by next Wed...I think I will take the day off to play with it.

And another update:

I just ordered another ART pro channel...Yeah, it's that good! So now there will be one each for two live mics....Just enuff for a duet, but not for a crowd....I can use the dual channel Lex MX200 for two mics....So that's two complete vocal strips with killer tube pres, inaudable comps(no pumping sound), and studio quality EQ's  and world class FX for 800 bucks....Not bad when you consider it works out to 400 bucks per mic and can be used for recording as well.

Once I got the ART unit tube preamp gain structured correctly, it was amazing....The comp is much easier to adjust than the preamp gain...Well, not really, it's just that I had to learn to crank the knobs into the yellow to really get the tube distortion that makes vocals so warm and full sounding....

It made the mics come alive with not just real-like sound, but emotion...It's like I'm running another pair of tops with just the vocals in them...The vocals stand out and have so much definition now....I've also discovered there is less chance of feedback even when i run the mics really hot...Not sure why that is, but it's a nice thing fersure....folks don't have to stay on top the mics like they did before because I can run them with lots more gain before feedback and the mics don't exhibit that proximity effect that you usually get when singers get too close to the mic.

Edit: We just tried crowding a single SM58 with 3 singers...Wow! All could be heard like they each had their own mic.....This thing offers so much gain it's incredible! You can see stage noise on the meter, but there just isn't any feedback. I'm sure i could push it to feed back, but that seems hard to do......I got the sweepable low cut cranked to 75 Hz and it appears to attenuate handling noise and stage rumble lots without any loss to deep vocals...I've got lots more mixer and amp headroom and tons of definition now....Makes me wonder what another 500 bucks would do.

I gotta run everyone off or get them to settle down...It's time for me to grab a few winks. I got a date with a wild pony tomorrow.