For years I've been using a Daking Pre One and a Warm Audio Tonebeast to basically record myself. The Tonebeast must go as it kinda sounds grainy to me and it has broken down over the years. The Daking is brilliant and is perfect for lots of sources with different mic combinations and is such a fine pre. I also have a Warm 1176 compressor that is ok and will most likely keep.

I'm gonna throw a chunk of change into my room, a kinda last hurrah and then (I promise!) to live with my choices until the last.

I have an opportunity to get one of the two following channel strips and will have to bid on one of them in an auction scenario hoping to snag it at a good price. I couldn't justify buying the Pendulum new never new as I'm not a commercial facility and neither am I made of gold.

The first and which I have limited experience with is the Universal Audio LA610 mkii. I used it at a test facility about 7 years ago (not sure if it was the mkii, it could have been the earlier incarnation) in conjuction with a Telefunken CU-29 Copperhead tube mic and the combo to me it sounded like a freaking record. The Copperhead beat out much more expensive mics on my voice, and although I won't be using that, my vocal mic is a Gefell UMT70S which has an M7 capsule and sounds like a different, sweeter kind of U87. I know the mkii has more headroom than it's predecessor which is a good thing...'nuff said. Intro bidding price: 900 bucks

The second is the top of the mountain, it doesn't get any better, it just different...a Pendulum Audio Quartet. It's not new, probably about 12-15 years old but it supposedly has some great modules. You can add harmonics by overdriving the tube stage which is a great thing and the opto compressor has four modes to choose from with one being program dependent. The three band Bandexall tube EQ section would be of course quite useful in both tracking and a mono source at mixdown and it also has a deesser that works somehow with the compression stage. It also let's you choose either a transformer output or not. It's flocking expensive at a first bid at 2380 local coin. I've no experience with it though I'm sure that unbeknownst to me I've heard it on some record at some point.

I also, if I'm the luckiest guy on Earth might also buy a Peluso 22 47 LE tube mic with a starting bid of 900 crackers.

Anybody hear one or work with a Pendulum?

Pluses and minuses?

Thanks...

 

Shure SM7B + Nebula Pre/EQ here. This microphone takes some of the room out of the equation, and it has been used on a lot of records. My large condenser tube mic is gathering dust due to the untreated room. Anyway, you seem to have better taste than me, so good luck with your search

 

Last edited: Nov 11, 2023

i have a Quartet II Mercenary edition, awesome pre and pairs with the umt70s extremally well, that being said, that wouldn't be a goto vocal chain me. acoustic guitar, absolutely!!
the umt70 needs to be a clean quiet space as most use it in omni or fig8 on guitars. vocally it wouldn't be my go to but with it vocally the quartet is in a different league vs the la610. (i dont have one but i do have a 6176 sitting right here in front of me at the moment.) but also leads to being a little harsh and treble pushed
in a mix the quartet is more powerful than some others due to its routing but you can do better

from low cost pre, dav's sound great with the umt70s and can be had cheap, neve's warm it up, a 512 makes guitars and vocals warm and present in the mix with little effort and ofcourse with out out any proximity effect

the tone beast is a good pre for the money but its not going to sound anything like the quartet or other pres that im going to list for you to review,
ive had quite a few pendulum products, they're hard to get rid of as they just work and sound good but i will be the first to say upfront, pendulum pres do not blending with other colors so keep that in mind please

$2380, a little high as my quartet ii was 2600 about 8 years ago.
my el8 is on almost every r&b mix i do and i like it in mastering as well but i have to truly question myself if i only had 1 ch strip would i use the quartet for vocals and personally i'm inclined to say it wouldn't be my number 1 choice.
here in atlanta ive recorded quite a few multi platinum artist through the quartet, mainly at zac's which is why i got one for myself

what other pres or ch strips have you considered?
let me toss some solid ones out for you as an engineer and someone who has worked with well over 70 preamps

Mastering Lab ML-1 (pure quality)
Tab-funkenwerk-v78m (great tone and vocally kills pres 5x as much)
Aurora gtqc (one of my go to pres even with my shelford ch that i think im going to sell for 3300)
Crane Song Flamingo (another go to pre vocally)
tree audio branch 2(i think you'll love and can be found for 23-2600, comp isnt the greatest though imo)
groove tubes vipre (amazing tone and character, even with a simple distressor behind it you cant make it sound bad and if you do you shouldnt be mixing lol)
Retro powerstrip (used of course you can find for 2500, great pre, slower but creamy vari-mu comp, extremely good pultec style eq)
Handcrafted Labs Velvet Channel Strip(2400 brand new and everything they make is top tier)

any of those will blow away the 610 and outshine the quartet on vocals imho there's quite a few more this is off the top of my head and looking at a rack next to me.
vocally i only track with 1 of 3 total mics depending on the artist voice and tone.

Stam sa800g
Bock 251
Lauten Audio Eden
90% of the time the eden doesnt get taken down, just get puts into a different modes. the stam if an artist is use to a c800g, going through the aurora gives me the classic c800g >1073 tone, the bock when i need an equal medium between the 2 that's still open but not sibilant b/c i personally hate using deessers vs manual... plus as an mastering engineer that happens to still do mixes here and there, i'll put vocals through mastering eqs while tracking or in the mix with different comps ... once you hear the openness that an ibis gives vocals and you know your room and monitoring.. you really don't need to do much in the mix other than creative choices and spatial stuff. but i dont want you maxing out credit cards like i did for 5-6 years straight only to say to yourself (why the ^## did i buy all this stuff 26-30k later)
ive downsized considerably and still have lot

 

good room or not the sm7 can do wonders if pairs with the right pre, eq and comp. absofreakinlutely!
that being said not to many ppl have heard a sm7b through a fern pre, into a crane song trakker, a pultec then mixed through an ssl duality or aws. near perfection but thats not an easy chain to obtain these days, yes the mic is cheap but everything else isnt

nebula is one thing, what pre are you using going in and cloudlifter or similar or not while tracking?

 

one other thing Lois Lane, how is your room, monitoring and converters?
id never suggest a 2k+ pre with trash converters or a bad room... money needs to be invested in those 2 areas before an expensive front end...
if you already have that under wraps... i listed some stuff you need to research for yourself and if you can get to a vk or a studio near you to audition some stuff before the purchase do so. thats something i never did and bought things that in the long run i didnt like or didnt use often

 

I've got a FetHead, but I can get by without using it on some things. Nebula is used for shaping the sound after the fact. It's a cheap solution, but as you say it's a decent microphone that has some advantages. I like reading threads about microphones though, it's a very interesting subject.

 

Last edited: Nov 12, 2023

I lost the bid on the Pelusi 22 47 LE which is a relief because I wasn't able to try it out before I would have won the auction.

I'm still contemplating the Pendulum. The auction was pushed as nobody bid on it.

@Zenarcist.. I have a four condensor mics that cover a wide range of uses. The two Microtech Gefell are the UMT70S and an M 930 which are both great mics. I bought the M 930 used but it was minimumly used for about half price, the UMT70S (it has the original Neumann M7 capsule from the same machines making those great old Neumann microphones) I got new about 7 years ago in which time the price shot up about 450 bucks. The pencil mics I use for when I want to capture more transient detail are a Beyerdynamic MC 930 which I bought used at about 35% of new and which is a really fantastic mic on acoustic guitar and shakers, and a very old Audio Technica 4051b which I hardly ever use. It has no bottom end to speak of below about 140 Hz and does the Cat Stevens sound without EQ.

I liked using a Fethead on the Electro Voice RE-20 condensor. I don't use it at all now but it was my first good mic in this modern era (post 2010) for me. The other that I have is an old Sennheiser MD21 from like 1953 or something but it doesn't sound as it should anymore.

Anyway...

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2023

Nice collection. There is something about a RE-20, have you still got it?

 

I'm a long time tube preamp freak having owned or used most of the quality tube preamps around today.
Of your two options I say Pendulum all day, they make quality tube gear, avoid the LA-610 series, too dark for quality vox IMHO, the only negative on the Pendulum is the company went out of business and any maintenance needed will be more difficult going forward.. I would also suggest you seriously consider a Coil Audio 286 preamp, I've got one here and it is special. You could then add a comp for your choice and just get busy tracking high quality vocals.

 

cant quite agree with you there i literally just finished a session that i tracked the vocals through a 6176.
28+ tracks of vocals with a manley reference going through a 6176 into a dave hill titan. dark it is not by any stretch. now if you had the impedance switch wrong and that rolled some top that's one thing but yea definitely not dark

 

I do still have it. It isn't the best mic on my voice though and always thought that it sounds best, at least on me (Thom York's voice on In Rainbows was great) when it's going through the clean preamp of an RME UCX II. With the Babyface I needed to use a Fethead but now with the 75 dB gain of the UCX II I no longer need to.

I bought it years ago from Alto Music and literally a day after the warranty was up it died for some reason. I tried to got a hold of the fellow that had fulfilled my order and shipped it here (it was less expensive at the time to have it shipped to Europe) but he had moved on. The new guy was very cool and we swapped my broken one for the demo model at the store in NY and also gave me a new warrenty like I had just bought it. Whenever I can I buy stuff from them I do. The last was the Daking Mic Pre One.

 

Just had to buy a car and so the mic pre/channel strip is officially on the back burner.

A car is good.

 

I own a la610 is definitely dark and wooly. However, I think it might not of sounded dark to you because the manely reference is a pretty bright mic. I own one along with a u87. I think a great tube pre is the affinity2. Nice tube warmth that isn't dark and muddy. I think a real sleeper pre is the Trident 20, 4t oram lineage. Imo of course

 

L

correct the manley reference is a rather bright mic, i'll agree with you there, but ive used this particular 6176 for about 8 years. swapped the tubes the tele'funken's and never had the wooly sound since. the stock tubes are bit wooly, especially if the gain is at 0 or higher with some drive, great for bass but not great vocally. i'll 100% agree with that. a tube change is the 610 makes a huge difference. when it comes to a lush tube sound i'd never use the 6176 nor the manley...
my goto is usually my lauten eden into an m72, sebatron pre, a coil (like WillTheWeirdo said, good call) i have a 70s not the 286, hell a fearn vt2 but nothing quite sounds like the eden into a m72, putting it through the titan, clariphonic then an cl1b into the daw, no such thing as a bad, dark or boring tone but its not exactly an every day chain anyone can obtain, that chain cost more than some ppls cars.
especially when dumb artist think a 737 is a god send and its trash at best with a decent eq and slow comp lol

i kinda miss my trident s20for awesome guitar tones but loved the CAPI pres soon as i used one as sold the s20s for capi's but for guitar, especially electric, its hard to pass on a triendt s20/4t

 

Yes, Sebatron preamps are something that I had been thinking/dreaming about too. Although they are made in Australia they offer free shipping. Their Thorax channel strip is enticing for an all in one bit of kit.

The fucking tires for our new car cost 400 bucks each.

 

i have a vmp-2000e that i bought new in 2008.
i also have a newer axis200vu. they sound completely different but both are awesome! i sold a 2610 for the 2000e and never looked back.
but 1 moment, what kind of car has tires that are $400 each? my escalade tires are like 270 each, my hellcat has extremely large expensive tires, they're 375 each for 315 nitto 555's! if you are driving a 800hp car your tires should never be close to $400 each, they're screwing you over

 

This is an industry of opinions and without hearing your voice and testing it with multiple mics and pre-amps there is no right answer beyond try it for yourself. Rely on someone else's and you deserve everything you get.

I've recorded through a lot of pre-amp and microphone combinations and there is no right combination. It's a mix of the talent, the performance, the pre-amp, the microphone and the room. But most of all the talent and the performance trumps all.

 

I misspoke...a wheel and tires together cost about CHF 400. I bought the winter tire set for 1600 bucks. A Kia Niro is the auto we bought.

Absolutely, testing combinations of preamps and mics is a best of all worlds way to go. If I lived in the USA I would be able to do just that with friends that have studios or outfits like Sweetwater or perhaps B & H in NYC that can give you the opportunity to spend time in a room and check out their offerings. I don't have that reality where I live.