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Hi there!

I've been reading around here lately about some preamps like The Brick and I'm starting to get more curious about them. I am still newb-ish so that's why I'm asking!

I am currently using just the EMU 0404 USB Interface. Would there be any improvement in sound/tone (electric guitar, acoustic, vocals) if I toppled on a decent preamp like The Brick before going into the EMU? Or would I just be spending money to add more noise to my signal?

Thank you in advance!

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RemyRAD Tue, 01/13/2009 - 23:37

Joe probably knows more about that preamp and I do?

What you didn't know about that is it's a poor man's imitation Neve. These boutique devices are designed for their character has opposed to their neutrality. People keep talking about wanting neutral sounding stuff. I don't know why? Go figure? The closest thing I come to neutral sounding equipment is all of the run-of-the-mill stuff. Which is what most people use here, since it's affordable. One of the marvelous things about these boutique preamps is that they are designed largely mimics that of the expensive historic ones. What does it really mean to you? It means that, you will quickly learn that in combination with input pads, trim/amplification level, output level, these 3 variables can create a plethora of rich, huge, fat sounding tracks. Oh yeah. You'll learn cool things like, pad on, gain highly cranked, output level lowered so as not to overload the input to your recorder. This won't sound anything like if you were to "properly adjust" the preamp as you would on any console. It's how you push those electrons through. And, it's also the transformers. Transformers are heavy, expensive and produce stupid kinds of wonderful distortion when overloaded. But if you're not a rabble rouser? I stick with those common neutral sounding thingies that's already built into your thingy.

It's a whole new world from a new old world
Ms. Remy Ann David