Tube mic preamp SOLO/610

[Big Daddy]

I was looking at the SOLO/610.

It looks good and the price seems OK for what it is.

Does anybody have experience with this unit?

Anything better and cheaper?

Does it help the sound if I use it on the Roland MS2400 I intend to buy for myself as a Christmas present?

I have been playing guitar for 40+ years and the last time I recorded was 1985....

I live in an apartment and want to put together a nice little system if you know what I mean. But I dig the old analog/tube sound.

I'm a big Tom Dowd fan........if you know who that is you'll understand where I'm coming from.

Thanks

 

[jonnyc]

I have an m610 koj sold me and I love it. It's great as a bas di and on guitars. Not bad on vocals either with the right mic.

 

[kojdogg]

i had a universal audio m610 (the rack mounted predecessor of the solo/610) which is now in good hands with another board member here. i loved it for vocals, acoustic guitar, electric amp and bass di (all of the things i tried it for essentially). it's a very "colored/charactered" preamp between the tube circuit and the input and output transformers influence on the sound. it does a great job mellowing out mics with a bit of harshness on the top. some people say it does that too much on any source. i found that swapping the tubes for nicer ones (it comes with two tubes-- a 12ax7 and a 6072a tube; the 6072a tube is a very nice GE JAN NOS tube, but the stock 12ax7 tube is a JJ-- great for guitar amps, questionable in this pre) made a significant improvement in how 'open' it sounded. it still had that softening effect on harsher sources, but didn't dull mics that weren't harsh to start. i used an nos valvo 12ax7 tube and a nos ge 5-star 6072a tube in the one i had, though the stock 6072a is good to start as mentioned.

as i mentioned i dug this pre on many sources and i thought it really shined on vocals.