ART TPS II and more

CoolCat

Well-known member
I wasnt going to babble about this rack unit but seeing no one has even posted here in a week and that activity was to close a old thread....

The ART TPS.

You know this is 4 weeks or so now and a bit of vocal tracking through it and play backs and I like it a lot.
Once I found the 3 out of 35 presets I wanted the unit works really well on my mic and my sound goal.

I think preamps fall mainly in clean, medium, and ability to be a FX....the unit is not clean but has a sparkle to it and it can do medium, which is almost clean....but it has the ability to overdrive a tube-ish compression higain sound that works.

my only application was a KSM44 vocal.

I did try it as a guitar preamp and really didnt find anything but I only spent 5 minutes on it, where the vocal usage I spent at least 20 minutes...maybe 1hr.

I want to try Bass soon and see if it can work for that.

The biggest joy in the hardware unit is I can pull up Reaper, select Track 1 or 2, as its a dual unit....and hit record and theres a nice large fat signal wave. That alone is worth the hardware and cables.

The other thing I like, is the front jacks and trs for a desktop setup this is great (see JoeMeek VC1Q have this)

The third positive is the price was $85 for a dual channel unit.

The fourth is there is a sound or two that work fine for me and has that HiFi sparkle, like a lot of starved tube designs aimed at a mic and works well on a LDC at least. The harsh sss's and t's have a soft compressed tone to kind of improve the home studio stuf (where in contrast a clean preamp can really show the warts and nasty)

The fifth is , for me, it wasnt that far away from other hiend pieces I tried for laying down rough shoddy demo jam stuff.

I think 4 weeks or so is pretty good, its not the 30 minute brain buzz high anymore.

Is it a LA610mk2? no....imo that one sounds good almost through the whole range and is a beauty of engineering....but this unit can give some compression via some sparkle to at least a few of the settings.

Is it better than a MPA? different but for me more versatile...It does something different than the MPA.
Though I think it can nearly match the MPA if you go normal this can also do "dirt" as garrw calls it.


is it worth $185 new? yes

is putting two little orange leds behind the 12A&7 tube so it "glows" a little cheesy? yes
 

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Looks nice. How do you set the limiter? I have the Art Pro MPA II preamp. My input chain runs from that unit to the ART Pro VLA II compressor/leveler then into my audio interface. That's been my setup for 3 years. Can't go wrong with ART products.
 
the limiter/compression is preset so you just turn the one knob...this knob does "something", and sets the attack.threshold and gain to some extent...a one knob compress/limiter imo.

it reads on the decal setting 3 main groups....Neutral, Warm, OPL (which is similar to the APHEX design in reducing itself to not clip digital gear or something)

starting at Neutral you can turn the knob towards Warm into OPL.
I guess setting it on Neutral would be the closest to bypass, maybe a 1:1 thing.

But as with most 2 staged, the preamp can effect the input to the comp/limiter.
So I was going for a little 1176ish dirt and that required the +20db IN, the Gain knob on Max and the Output a tiny bit off 0.....then the V3 set to Bass or Piano...or one of the 16 choices.

I havent tried Bass in it yet....bass seems to sound good with about anything though. lol
Been playing novice guitar tech lately and adjusting Truss Rods that have stripped nuts...damn.
PawnSHops and Craigslist seems to get me about 30% of the time with defective gear of some type...it shows up once at home and under use.

heres a pic of the single...but it doesnt have the impedance knob.
 

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That's a good song. The impedance setting on the full size unit would be worth having. I notice it increasing impedance helps ribbon mics sound less dark.
 
This is funny, I have an ART TPS II and am thinking of selling it because I like my other pres more, I found the ART too fiddly as there are too many options and it took me too long to make up my mind, if this makes sense, as I was usually working with a client. After reading this maybe I'll hang on and give it another chance. Then again how many mic pres do I need? What a silly question - lots. :)

Alan.
 
I tried a bass through the TPS just now and it was about the same as the results= you find a usable setting...and I probably wont need the other settings. However I was able to get the fuzz tone similar to the raw tracks on Come Together ..little fuzz tone on the bass. the fuzz seems easier to get on guitars than a mic.?

I had a P-Bass I had bought for $80 laying around and tried it ....wow! its quiet compared to my 30yr old Squier Jazz E series.
..nothing new to most bass players, but wow that was very noticeable.

awhile back tried a Radial J48 or 45 and thought my interface pre was very close and sold the J48 but listening later J48 had a tiny more clarity and was easier to setup for sure...there is no setup. love that.
Hardware DI into Reaper without any plugins is really refreshing at times.
the TPSII has a decent , clarity, I probably wont buy a DI, the TPS is fine and I can plug in the front TRS jack which is cool.

The J48 Radials beauty is its no knobs and lets the bass guitar be its own...where the TPS offers clean to fuzz with a lot of possible unwanted positions.
 
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awhile back tried a Radial J48 or 45 and thought my interface pre was very close and sold the J48 but listening later J48 had a tiny more clarity and was easier to setup for sure...there is no setup. love that. Hardware DI into Reaper without any plugins is really refreshing at times.

Right on. Get the bass tone right at the source, then you won't need to use any sims ITB. I run the DI out from my Gallien-Krueger head through an outboard compressor then into Reaper. All the tone adjustments are done with the amp eq. The only ITB processing is a 50hz hi pass.

The less you rely on sims and plugins, the sweeter the tone.
 
A caveat about the DPS-II (and most likely the TPS-II also) from a Sound On Sound review ( ART DPS II | )

"Phantom Foibles
Phantom power can be switched to the mic XLRs, but the rear panel also offers balanced inputs, wired in parallel on both jacks and XLRs, which are designed to handle anything from mic level to modest line levels. This might seem fair enough, but my tests showed that when the phantom power was switched on, it went to both front- and rear-panel XLRs, as well as to the balanced input jack on the rear panel, which could cause serious problems if a piece of sensitive line-level equipment were to be plugged in when the phantom power was on. What's more, the manual doesn't seem to include any obvious warnings about this, though it does spell out the usual caveats on using dynamic mics with phantom power. The front-panel unbalanced jack is of course unaffected."


These ART preamps do a lot, a lot of apllications. That variable input impedance control can even make a condenser mike feel more supple (less brittle).

Paj
8^)
 
so I guess they are saying when the +48Vdc is ON, it applies the power to the pin on the front TRS socket and the rear socket XLR...and the Balanced jack Input jack.
The balanced jack being the Warning...in case a keyboard or something sensitive is plugged into the 1/4" balanced jack INPUT jack, as I read this.

I just tested this and its true....with +48Vdc ON the voltage is appplied to the 1/4" TRS tip and mid points, both.
Doesnt bother me because I dont use it for anything but a LDC but there it is.. ground/black on the cable ground and red wire to mid and tip both had 48vdc on the Input 1/4" balanced cable.
However with a regular guitar cable, two conductor, unbalanced there is no 48vdc seen.
Black lead on ground and red on the tip of the guitar 1/4", 48v wasnt seen on the meter. (I was seeing a 4Vdc on the unbalanced cable)

The front TRS jack has 0vdc when a 1/4" line cable, balanced or unbalanced is plugged in.

So all of this is only about the rear 1/4" INPUT Balanced jack.....the front is fine and the rear XLR Input is normal...but the rear 1/4" is hmmm?Warning.
 

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