Bogen amps and plugin transformers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Somnium7
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Bogan is a derogatory term in Australia - derived from the annoying & rather meaty Bogan Moth & used to refer to thsoe who's lifestyle & tastes are suburban, inclined toward mullet (hair not the fish) & about as radical as confederate flag waving baptists.
To my mind, that's a bunch of OK as I'm a "westie", wear flannelette, denim & have a funny haircut - mind you my politics isn't so much redneck as red (I'd rather be red than dead!).
 
Yeah I know it has been a few years....
But hey, life's a bitch then you die.

But the bitch gave me back my Bogen after all this time and now I finally get to play with it.

Here are samples of the CT-35 with an Art MPA Pro II for comparison.

1 - http://www.somnium7.com/samples/NEW%20SAMPLE%20%206.wav Pro MPA II

2 - http://www.somnium7.com/samples/NEW%20SAMPLE%2011.wav Bogen CT-35 (Tape Output)

The Pro MPA is setup as follows. Channel 1 is fed from a Shure SM7B. It outputs into channel 2. Channel one has a used GE 12AT7 and channel 2 has a used GE 12AU7. Daisychaining the channels is somewhat necessary with the SM7 because of it's low output. Both channels are set to about 1 to 2 O clock on the gain and level controls. Channel 1 has the +20 gain switch on and both channels are on "high voltage" mode.

The Bogen sample is the same Shure mic into one of its 4 mic inputs. Compression is set to null and the output is from the tape out which is taken prior to the EQ. Mic gain is at 8 and then turned to 10 at the end.

Neither is clean or particularly detailed but both have good color and compliment each other. However, the Bogen is a big box of crayons once you start digging into it. I have named it the Crunch Box. Here's why...

http://www.somnium7.com/samples/NEW%20SAMPLE%20%203.wav (Direct out, post EQ and power amp stages)

Believe me it gets even crunchier than this too. Badly tuned AM radio has nothing on the Bogen Crunchbox! ;)
 
I used to have a Bogen 50 watt tube amp which powered a home-brew Leslie speaker. It was free so I never complained, but it certainly was "colorful", and not always in a good way. I'm sure it would have beneffited from new tubes or at least new caps, but the organ, Leslie and amp all got sold a few years back to a Biker Church in Taylor, tx.

Good stuff. Good luck with your audio explorations!
 
I bought 6 Bogen Mic preamp modules a couple years ago on e-bay for $1 each ... They were Transformer ballanced input Mic preamp cards with screw terminals for the Mic and had High and low cut filters and 20db-54db of gain , I put XLR Connectors on 4 of them and Mounted them in a Box with a Regulated 30v PSU and RCA Outputs and also upgraded some of the caps ....

These are actually really good sounding Mic preamps with a nice ammount of color without being dirty or muddy and they are dead quiet were Hum and hiss are concerned , Sound great for micing drums .....

One of my best buys.....


Cheers
 
Minion said:
I bought 6 Bogen Mic preamp modules a couple years ago on e-bay for $1 each ... They were Transformer ballanced input Mic preamp cards with screw terminals for the Mic and had High and low cut filters and 20db-54db of gain , I put XLR Connectors on 4 of them and Mounted them in a Box with a Regulated 30v PSU and RCA Outputs and also upgraded some of the caps ....

These are actually really good sounding Mic preamps with a nice ammount of color without being dirty or muddy and they are dead quiet were Hum and hiss are concerned , Sound great for micing drums .....

One of my best buys.....


Cheers
Click to expand...

That's really cool! Do you have pictures of this by any chance? Would love to see it. I also had a few input modules like those that I bought at a local shop for a buck eack but I sold them on Ebay. I also had a handful of of the TM-200 input trannies which I traded for vacuum tubes.

The Ct-35 I'm messing with uses these TM-200s and they don't sound terrible. I haven't measured the gain of the mic preamp but it seems to be pretty high. It amplifies the the SM7B to a usable level with gain to spare. I'm impressed that this sounds as good as it does. Looking at the circuits the entire thing is discreet transistor and in tracing the signal flow all capacitors that pass audio are polypropylene until the output from the compressor stage and then there is a electrolytic going into the EQ and power amp stages. From the tape output the signal has not been through a single nasty old electrolytic at all.

I'm starting to dig the compressor. When you crank it things get ugly and stuff starts sounding smushed with very heavy pumping. Turning it back down to the low end of it's range and it is rather usable as long as the material isn't too fast. It has a fixed time constant with a fairly slow rate which seems suitable for vocals or keys. Tried it with acoustic guitar but it was too slow there.

I was able to plug the guitar's output right into the Aux inputs which actually have a 1 Meg impedance and work great with guitar level signals.

I'll be trying some takes with a vocalist through this thing soon. I'll post the results.
 
The Bogen Mic preamp modules I racked up aren"t anything special to look at , It is is a Wooden box with lopsided edges , Totally utilitarian , If I get a chance I"ll post a pic of it and one of the Preamp Cards as I still have 2 of them that haven"t been racked .....

Cheers
 
Hi,do you still have those mic transformers? Bogen TM-200a,s
 
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