Strongest Clean Boost

[melveyr]

Hey gang,

What do you think is the strongest clean boost on the site in terms of relatively clean DB gain? I was considering buying a transformer for a mic, then going into that clean boost and using that as a mic pre.

 

[Alan W]

To my knowledge most of the boosts run up to about 20db boost, which may work fine with some mikes—I don’t know. A simple one, like the Transcendence, would be a good place to start.

But before you do, while poking around to see if my sense that this might not be the best approach was correct, I bumped into this article that seems like a great primer on what mic preamps do:

https://www.thatcorp.com/datashts/AES129_Designing_Mic_Preamps.pdf

 

[melveyr]

thanks for your suggestion and the document! transcendence looks perfect for clean gain. i will give it a go and worst case i get a cool guitar boost

 

[Harry Klippton]

To my knowledge most of the boosts run up to about 20db boost, which may work fine with some mikes—I don’t know. A simple one, like the Transcendence, would be a good place to start.

But before you do, while poking around to see if my sense that this might not be the best approach was correct, I bumped into this article that seems like a great primer on what mic preamps do:

https://www.thatcorp.com/datashts/AES129_Designing_Mic_Preamps.pdf

Thanks for sharing this. I was looking for something similar the other day

 

[jwin615]

What are you planning on running the output into? Guitar pedals?
Using it with line level stuff(mixers, rack gear) likely won't work out due to impedance. Additionally, your output won't be a balanced signal.
Also, 20db isn't much gain for most dynamic mics unless the source is very loud.
Just some things to think about.
If you're just running it into pedals, could work out well enough.

 

[mdc]

TC integrated preamp maybe? Not sure it’s much louder than anything else but it’ll have a lot more headroom than anything running at 9v

 

[DeadAirMD]

Barry's Stage 3 boost says its 25-30db. Just built it today to add to a combo build with an Archibald tube driver. It's loud, very loud. Plus you can tweak one resistor to change that.