Cheap mic preamps

[jeremyandstuff]

One more newbie question from me...

For those who haven't seen my previous posts, I've been recording at home for quite a long time on really outdated gear and am now looking to step up to something more modern. I more or less have used the same equipment for the past 10 years and have never owned a mic preamp. Most of my stuff in the past was recorded with electric guitars, bass and keyboards connected straight into the interface. However, whenever I would attempt to use a mic for acoustic guitars and vocals, I would just suffer through extremely low volume levels and tons of background noise due to the lack of a preamp.

So I guess what I'm saying is any kind of preamp would be a major improvement from what I had before. I have a somewhat tight budget, so I'm looking for something that's $500 or less (preferably in the $200 or $300 range). I'm looking for a desktop preamp, if possible, and I don't need anything with more than two channels. I don't really have a preference of tube vs. solid state -- I just want something that will give me a nice clean signal boost, minimize the noise, and not color the mic'ed sound too much. Again, this is mainly to mic acoustic guitars and vocals.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks.

 

[jimmys69]

One more newbie question from me...

For those who haven't seen my previous posts, I've been recording at home for quite a long time on really outdated gear and am now looking to step up to something more modern. I more or less have used the same equipment for the past 10 years and have never owned a mic preamp. Most of my stuff in the past was recorded with electric guitars, bass and keyboards connected straight into the interface. However, whenever I would attempt to use a mic for acoustic guitars and vocals, I would just suffer through extremely low volume levels and tons of background noise due to the lack of a preamp.

So I guess what I'm saying is any kind of preamp would be a major improvement from what I had before. I have a somewhat tight budget, so I'm looking for something that's $500 or less (preferably in the $200 or $300 range). I'm looking for a desktop preamp, if possible, and I don't need anything with more than two channels. I don't really have a preference of tube vs. solid state -- I just want something that will give me a nice clean signal boost, minimize the noise, and not color the mic'ed sound too much. Again, this is mainly to mic acoustic guitars and vocals.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks.

You stated 'interface'. What is it that you are using?

My personal opinion is that if you do not already have a quality (insert price) interface with clean preamps and a room worthy of recording in (add: quality sound from instruments, room treatment to make it worthy of recording, and an appropriate mic for any particular source), then you are placing your expectations in the wrong order.

My answer would be a definite no, if you do not already have a decent interface or have not addressed the elephant in the room.

Instrument 1st. Performance 2nd. Room 3rd. Mic suited for the instrument 4th. Interface with clean preamp 5th. 6th - Adding a preamp to fix or make any of the previous better-wasted money if the first 5 are not there. Even then possible wasted money unless your wife doesn't find out...

Seriously, don't waste your money unless you get the basic stuff down first. Just my opinion.

 

[Nola]

The scarlette focusrite interfaces are the best in that range, in my experience. The 18i8 gives 4 inputs for like $250-300 (price may vary). If you only need two inputs you'll be in even better shape.

Preamps help a lot with clean gain, so I think it's a worthy buy. The focusrite's have fairly clean gain. It's clean until about 3 o'clock. I eventually upgraded my preamp to something nicer and notice the difference at higher gain. So it depends on the gain need of your mic and what future upgrades you plan to do. If you do upgrade to an even nicer preamp down the line you can use the focusrite for the converters, so it won't go to waste. You just go into it's line-in to use it as a converter if you get a better pre down the road.