| Thomas Brekke wrote on Tue, 14 December 2004 05:30 |
My feeling is that a lot of class A circuits have a lot of punch and a cool, often subtle compression in certain areas of the spectrum. This "compression" or "fatness" is something I associate with the Neves I've heard.
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Sure. There are a bunch of units that accomplish that sort of "fatness" [it's not really a compression, it's more of a whole bunch of even order harmonic distortion coupled with a mediocre slew rate], that "fatness" comes mostly as a byproduct of the transformer design employed in the circuit.
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Seems like the Vintech 473 could be the one for me. Almost everyone says they're great (except some dealers who don't sell them.......).
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Oh shit... (kicks dirt, stares at the ground), like I haven't heard that accusation a bazillion times. Look ace, M-A has had the opportunity to carry Vintech for years, M-A doesn't carry Vintech because of a consious decision that was based on experience... you want to draw a different conclusion, knock yourself out, the fact of the matter is that nobody in our joint was wild about them, so we don't carry them.
Ya know what, we could carry Pro-Tools too if we wanted to... guess what, we don't wanna.
Now, with that said the Vintech 473 could be great for your applications, could be the greatest thing you've touched since you discovered what your pecker is for... but there ain't nobody on any forum anywhere that will be able to come up with the answer for you... except you of course.
If you're looking for validation of a purchase decision, fine... but the fact of the matter is that if you're looking for a 1073 get a 1073, AMS-Neve makes them [M-A doesn't sell those either, but we highly recommend them... go figure], if you want to buy a unit based on the 1073 design, then the Vintech may indeed be right for you... but it's
NOT A 1073. I would hope that people will make their decisions from actual listening instead of from hype/bullshit marketing.
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From what I've read so far it seems like Great Rivers NVs are good, but a bit clean and Phoenix DRS is a bit airy, bright and uncolored. But well, it could be that the difference between these pre's is quite small, but give me a hint if I'm doing something foolish..............
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The only thing I can see that you're doing that's foolish is trying to make a purchasing decision based on something other than your own experience with the product. The Great River and the Phoenix sound like the Great River and the Phoenix. Neither was intended to sound like a 1073.
The Great River started with the 1073 drawing, and that's where the similarities end. The component selection is different, the transformers are very different, the features, the functions... all different.
The Phoenix is even more different. Phoenix Audio started by making Class A replacement op-amps for the class A/B "BA-440" op-amps in 8078 and 8068 style consoles [particularly for the 3415 line amplifier module]. This op-amp was designed by David Rees [who used to work for the old "Rupert Neve Company"... he's actually the guy that designed the 2254 compressor/limiter], it was made as a replacement part to "fatten up" the sound from 8068's and 8078's... it just turned out that it made a cool mic pre so they started to sell it as a stand alone pre.
Seeing that Phoenix was originally in the business of refurbishing old Neve desks they had a ton of the red "Marconi" knobs and the little gray 'Neve Knobs' so they threw them onto the units... it was more about being too lazy or too cheap to do research into finding new knobs, it was NEVER about trying to be a "Neve clone" by any stretch of the imagination.
Now... with all that said... there are some other things you might owe it to yourself to look into... like the Helios stuff. That is also a different sound than a "Neve" sound, but it's usually no less "fat" [or is it "phat"?] sounding, but again, they're different [and M-A doesn't pimp them so there is zero financial motivation in that recommendation]... there is the Chandler stuff, and as you've also mentioned, there is the Aurora stuff [Geoff used to be a draftsman for the old "Rupert Neve Company"... used to do stuff with Phoenix Audio too back when they refurbished old Neve desks before starting his own thing]... and the 7th Circle kit [which I haven't heard, but have been told by a few friends that it's really fun to fuck around with swapping different transformers in and out of the circuit to create different tones and textures].
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The best price I've been offered on the 473 and power supply, is $2800. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Better deal, anyone......?
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There I can be of no assistance... but if you're into putting in the energy you can call around to all the dealers and pit one against the other unitl they're ready to pay you to take the damn thing.
BTW, what country are you in?
