Dave... two questions.....

Have you allowed the preamp to warm up for 30 mins?
Is the noise in both channels?

dave and I have been trying to work out this issue together the past day or so. I bought mine about a week ago and made some recordings that sounded wonderful. Dave has the same noise in both channels. Also mine is clean from the second the switch is flipped. no warmup required although I hear they do sound better after about 30 minutes. The interesting thing about dave's unit is that the D.I. input seems to be noise free.

It says in the manual that the valves will probably be noisy until they have warmed up.

Are you running the Sebatron into the Mackie channel line input / 1/4" input?

i assume you mean from the trs send? no. we used the xlr outs on both the mic in and the d.i.

.... and then it is running to what? The recorder? The Mackie channel strip via the 1/4" line input on the channel strip or the insert return ? Which is it?

xlr balanced out from sebatron direct to channel 1 on the mackie. Using XLR though not using 1/4" at all.

Let me get this straight....

Are you saying that you are using an XLR to XLR lead to go from the Seb output to a Mackie preamp?????? :shock: :shock:

Man, you are asking for problems!!!!!!!!

If you MUST use the Mackie at all, get a female XLR to male TRS lead and go into the line input.

But I would be bypassing the Mackie altogether!

i must be confused or really wrong. please forgive me as I am a new poster. So could you explain why xlr to xlr is bad. Dave is running into a mackie vlz mixer like this and I am running xlr direct as well into my tascam fw 1082 which then goes into my mac. I didn't know this wasn't right. I dont use any of the gain on the tascam "pre" and dave has his all the way down too.

Because going out of one preamp into another is not desirable.
You are sending a signal into the second preamp that is already line level. I'm 99% sure that will be your noise problem.
Even when you daisy-chain the channels of the Seb you have to use the 1/4" I/Os

by-pass the makie and see the difrance.

Thanks, guys, for all the help. However, Dave is going to have to return the unit. We tried everything including eliminating the mackie from the chain, recording in a clothes closet etc. but to no avail. Its been 3 days and sadly, there are no more options.

Get a replacement. There has to be something going on there.
My 4000e is VERY quiet for a tube preamp.
As you are no doubt aware, they are an exceptionally good preamp and are worth persisting with.

Also Seb has a 30 money back guarantee, so you have plenty of time to sort this out.

yeah it's strange because my 4000e is also really quiet...yeah it souldn't be a prob to change it via sebatron ... ;)