I tracked a college rock band this past weekend and I grew a bit fustrated with the limited headroom on my Sytek mic preamp's.
I used them on a SRW bass cabinet/RE-20, a fender amp/M-88, snare/57, and kick/TLM-103. I had to move the kick to a different mic preamp because it would overload with the gain all the way down. The mic was about 3-4 feet in front of the kick.
On each channel I could not really get the gain I wanted going to tape without clipping the mic preamp. I guess I could have put a compressor on the output as another gain stage. Any good solutions to this problem? I love the Sytek's but the lack of headroom has me thinking I might be better off selling and picking up a GR-NV.
Thanks,
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Certain mics are all but unuseable without some kind of external
Certain mics are all but unuseable without some kind of external pad. That's the one nice thing about the AKG 414 series - plenty of pad options. On the other hand, the TLM 103 and the Earthworks QTCs are so hot they barely need preamps at all! Whirlwind makes the "IMP PAD" - a clean inexpensive in-line device that works just fine.
Well, I don't know about how loud the bass/guitar tracks were, b
Well, I don't know about how loud the bass/guitar tracks were, but drums usually clip any pre I've used without at least a 15db pad. I just bought a couple adjustable pads which ought to come in really handy since my console only has a 30db pad which is a bit extreme for most cases. Maybe you should do the same?