Recording - December 2009 - 6

Note to faithful writers: When sending email to talkback@recordingmag.com, please remember to include your name and where you hail from. Musings on preamps Hi Justin—Thanks for the great review on the LaChapell 583s (April 2009). Great insight. I just wanted to get your opinion on a few gear questions? A quick background on me. My name is Jason (24 years old), I’m running Pro Tools with a Digi 003. I’m a musician/songwriter and just purchased my gear to save money by laying down most of my tracks with my gear, at my home studio. The plan is to take my tracks to be mixed and mastered by someone else I trust and have gotten great results from in the past. So, my goal is to get the best tones I can, at home, with what I have. My next purchase I want to make is in a great mic pre. After your review, I’m now on the fence between the LaChapell & the Grace Design m101 (which I’m interested in primarily because of the cost value). If you don’t mind, what would you go with and why? Thanks for your time and again for the great review. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your future reviews! Side note: I live 30 minutes away from Scott LaChapell’s shop (I never knew that till after your review) so I’m thinking of swinging by his shop to check it out Jason Michael Calderon Los Banos, CA Justin Peacock replies: Hi Jason—Thanks for your kind words. Glad you got a lot out of the review! Both the LaChapell and Grace are fantastic preamps. You can’t go wrong with either. The biggest difference, I’d say, is that the LaChapell is going to give you far more color than the Grace. And, depending on how you drive the LaChapell, you can get even more color out of it by pushing the input harder. The Grace, however, will remain very transparent all of the time. But if money is your primary deciding factor and you only want the one preamp channel, I can’t really see how the LaChapell would be a good way to go. Not only do you need to buy the preamp, but you need a 500-Series rack enclosure as well. At minimum you’d have to get an API 6-space Lunchbox enclosure which is around $375, so your total cash outlay would be over $1500, compared to under $600 for a single-channel Grace. In the end, you have to decide how many more preamps/500-Series pieces you might buy in the future. It ends up being very reasonable in the long run, but the initial investment of the rack makes the sting worse at first. I always try to think of preamp purchases in the context of price per channel rather than straight cost—an API Lunchbox full of preamps, eqs and compressors spreads the cost of the enclosure out across many units, so the price per channel actually goes down the more you buy, if that makes sense. Also, you didn’t mention what kind of music you do or what kinds of microphones you like to use. For meRECORDING DECEMBER 2009 that really helps dictate what preamps I will use. Most people like a little color and the LaChapell is a great one for that—it won’t be too much of one sound. The Grace layers really well and won’t ever get in the way. That being said, you may find yourself wishing you had some more color at times. Ultimately, my feeling with preamps is that they are of far less importance than instrument selection/sound and mic selection and placement. If you use a clean, transparent preamp like the Grace, you’ll get great depth and sound and can focus your energies on things like mics and instruments. If you can afford the LaChapell, however, then you’ll have (in my opinion) a more tonally flexible piece—even more so with the ability to switch out tubes. Lastly, I would also consider whether you will eventually need two preamps for recording things in stereo, i.e., acoustic guitar, piano, drum overheads, etc. If you do, that could change how you plan for the future. Just a word of caution: the 500-Series thing is addicting and I think you’ll quickly find yourself wanting more and more modules to fill your rack! But, honestly, for home recordists, I think it’s a really cool way to try different preamps, eqs and compressors and fit a lot of gear into only three rack spaces. Good luck and let me know how it goes! Cheers—JP PS: Scott LaChapell is a really great guy—if you stop by, tell him hi for me! Michael and Eben Grace are equally awesome individuals, and interestingly enough, Grace Design happens to be only a couple of miles from my studio—and from the Recording offices, too. It’s nice to have great neighbors! Aw shucks Hi! Just wanted to send an email along to tell you that I am a huge fan of your magazine and website. I am a recent graduate of a 2-year audio recording/ engineering program. Not only am I finding that I am collecting all the Recording magazines I can get my hands on, but I have gone back and re-read older issues and still find the articles just as informative a second time around! Keep them coming, please! Your magazines are an enormous asset to anyone in the industry. Annemarie Saul via email Thanks for the kind words, Annemarie. We enjoy bringing all this information to our readers, and are always looking for ways to improve our game—please don’t hesitate to write to us if you feel there’s something you’d like to see in the pages of Recording. Good luck in all your future musical endeavours, and thanks for reading.—MM

Recording - December 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2009