Customer Reviews

ART Pro Channel Tube Mic Preamp and Compressor with EQ

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As of July 10, 2011, I have owned this fine mono-line equipment for 48 hours. I bought it for a mono microphone line to my ham radio station. It is a wonderful piece of equipment. A.R.T. has built a preamp, compressor, and equalizer into one compact box; basically it is "plug and play". At first the equipment seemed daunting as to all of its adjustments. So I hooked it up to the left channel of my low-power FM radio station and, reading the user's guide and listening with my ear, I found its best adjustments that I prefer. Pulling it from the FM station I reconnected it to the ham radio. Ahhh! What a difference to my voice. So what's next? Well... to purchase its stereo counterpart for the FM station!

Seller: Ordered on Monday and received equipment on Monday!

Pros: excellent quality sound, quiet, 1/4" mono jacks, XLR plug, for microphone, musical instruments.

Cons: gets warm due to the 3 12AX7 tubes (you EXPECT tubes to get warm!), so many dials, switches, and LED lights it SEEMS a never-ending task to get it set the way you want your sound to be. (well worth it)

Would recommend this to anyone who uses a mono, single sound chain

I LOVE this preamp. I'm not crazy about the EQ or compression but I have a great EQ in my DAW and wonderful Compressor so that's not an issue for me. For vocals matched with my SM7b or SM57 this wonderful compressor adds such a warmth I feel as though I'm a late night DJ. It has such beautiful intimacy.

I will say that you have to be very careful because the preamps are not noise free. They will add some hiss and I do not know if that is how they are, being tube, or if that is a defect. I need to call ART and find out. In spite of that I would not take this back. It's not noticeable when instruments or vocals are playing so can be edited out in the final mix. I edit out the silent parts anyway. It gives my recordings a warmth that feels like the 70's. If you love classic rock, that's a great thing.

I own one of these bad boys and the three tubes make it attractive! .2 attack on a the tube compressor is amazing it's basically a limiter and a compressor (2ms attack fast setting) in optical mode vs tube mode(.2 ms attack on fast setting).

I would say the pre amp is one of the best. The noise floor is 130db a the grace101's noise foloor is 127 so you can see how the art competes if not better than higher end models. Passing through three tubes is awesome. you don't even need to use the eq just having it pass through the eq tube gives you even more warmth!

I wish there was a high voltage/low voltage control on the tubes but even without you still get a substantial amount of warmth.

I would totally recommend this unit to anyone.

I just had my first gig with this unit and it went great. This is my first tube preamp and was very happy with it. Obviously, it was nothing earth-shattering but the "warm" tone worked great for my bass (Steinberger L2) which doesn't have much character on its own.

The unit has 3 distinct units (tube preamp, tube or optical compressor, "tube" EQ). The preamp and compressor work as you'd expect. Nothing fancy there. The EQ has 4 sections, two of which have adjustable frequencies. Actually, the parametric EQ is really great because the two sweepable EQs can be switched to be x10 their frequency range so there is a good amount of overlap which gives you a lot more control over the EQing.

I also like that you can set the VU meter to read from each point in the chain (post-preamp, post-compressor, and post-EQ). Also, there's a separate level meter for the preamp level AND the compression level.

The outputs are where the unit begins to lack. There is a 1/4" output/input loop for the preamp, compressor and EQ. Only the main out (after the EQ) has an XLR out. I was using the unit in a live setting and the FOH engineer wanted my unaffected signal, which means I needed to give him a feed post-preamp (before the compressor and EQ). That was fine, but at that point in the signal chain there is only a 1/4" output, so we needed to use a separate DI box to convert to XLR. Most other preamps that are intended for bass will always have an balanced XLR output after the preamp.

The other weird thing I found was that the manual says about the XLR output: "Be certain that you do not connect the Pro Channel's XLR Output to a mixer input that has Phantom Power applied". This is concerning because there will definitely be situations where I don't have control over this. I wonder what will happen if phantom power is applied.

So, it's a 4 out of 5. I'd give it a 5 if it had an XLR output after the preamp stage that worked like a DI, maybe with a 20dB pad and supported phantom power.

This might be a bit of an unusual usage for this equipment but I use my ART as a
compressor for mike audio fed into a vintage AM Amateur Radio Transmitter.
This device is great to guard against modulating more than 100 percent while providing a "non clipped" natural mike audio sound.
Heck, I might just buy another one....

Let me just sum it up...... WOW!!!!!

nuff said.

Truly a great experience to use this equipment! The instructions were well organized and clear. The equipment satisfies all my expectations!