I own a Penta.
But I've not heard a Tampa.
The Penta is a pretty good clean pre.
By itself the pre does not have much personality.
Its kinda of "dry" sounding for lack of a better word....bright.
But quite clean.
For vocals, I usually use the TUBE sound knob at about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way for some roundness and warmth.
Keep in mind the vox tracks I usually use do not require a pristine sound.
The one thing about the Penta that is very quirky is the compressor.
It is WILDLY different between settings and if you get one be sure to keep the output volume down while flipping through the different settings because the gain structure between different compressor settings varies a LOT.
I dont really know why but I've surged the volume on a few sources and its very annoying so now I just turn down 1st when fishing for a compressor setting.
Most of the time I dont use it for compression though.....especially for vocals......I end up using my RNC.
I do like it for DI bass a lot though....with the compressor.
Also.......the manuall says to NEVER use the Stereo Width feature with a mono source.
So of cource that was one of the 1st things I did with it and it can be a cool effect and sometimes work very good for a vocal track.
Not exactly a comparison response as you asked but unfortunately I've no experience with the TAmpa.
-mike
