You may very well be right that they are not Focusrite pres, thanks for the correction. I stand by my statement that they will work fine as basic channels, and when better outboard pres are added, they're still good enough to be used as auxiliary channels. In my case, mostly all they'll ever be used for is toms, highhat (if I even bother to mic it), and talkback. I don't do bands with huge numbers of simultaneous ins. I'm doing solo acoustic acts and a string quartet.
Also note that the channels with pres on an 002 (1-4) are the only ones with phantom power, bass cuts, and XLR ins.-Richie
P.S.- pres? Cheap and clean- M-Audio DMP-3, I consider it pretty compareable to the pres in the 002. Color? For cheap I like Joemeek. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet. I feed channels 5-8 with an Avalon AD2022 and a Joemeek twinQ, and I've finally arrived at sound quality I can live with. Woo Hoo!