Preamp overdrive

[Matt C.]

i need some schooling about the different types of preamps and the gain staging within them. specifically, i want to buy a preamp that i can drive hard to get some distortion, but still control the output level into my computer/tape machine. should any preamp with two gain stages be able to do this? will some types of preamps give me a totally unusable form of distortion? i am definitely looking to get noticable distortion, not just a nice warm tone or whatever. and i'm looking for something relatively inexpensive, maybe $500 or less. any tips or information about what types of preamps i should be looking for would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

 

[mshilarious]

The majority of preamps are not designed to distort nicely, they are designed to give you as much clean headroom as possible, but once you exceed that, they will distort quickly and nastily. The exceptions would be some tube and transformer gear; sub-$500 maybe the Brick would be the most obvious choice. ART's nicer MPA Gold stuff can saturate a little before clipping, but probably not to the degree you are interested in. The boxes people rave about saturating are API, but those are a bit more than $500.

You could DIY a nice colored tube preamp for less than $500 . . .

 

[greyharmonix]

electro harmonix tube pre also has a musical distortion up to a certain point. this mic pre however has a really low gain and works best with condensers that don't require alot of gain. it's relatively cheap and sounds great too.

 

[MOFO Pro]

Your source has everything to do with the answer to this question... Are you talking about guitar, instrument, or vocal?

 

[Matt C.]

i guess i'm thinking of using this mostly for vocals and drums, since with guitars i've got the amp distortion right there to fiddle around with, but i still like the idea of recording a distorted guitar through a distorted/overdriven preamp, just to make it extra raw sounding.

a related question - if i try to do this with a preamp that isn't really made for it, is it just gonna sound "bad", or is it going to fry the preamp circuitry completely? cause id' be happy to experiment with it myself, but i don't want to end up with a pile of broken preamps.

 

[greyharmonix]

hmm it's seems like you just need to track stuff and see how it sounds before you start buying stuff not knowing what sort sound you're trying to achieve. there are so many variables in figuring out how something will sound that every setup is different and every suggestion you'll ever get is very general and really should be taken as a suggestion or idea not necessarily law.

i have a feeling you're pretty new to recording. the way i got better was to record everyone including myself who wanted to record and really listen to how changing mic placement or comp. or pre amp settings affect everything.

And no you won't break anything by distorting pre amps it'll just probably sound really bad. it's not like overdriving a guitar amp. it's not musical.. you'll find out though. Record!