Recording - January 2017 - 35

the sound. So, when asking the question,
"What does the Beamer sound like?",
there's no simple answer.
I would call the Berliner vintage-toned,
round, and easily drivable into a beautiful top-end overdrive. This preamp has a
nice grit and growl as it is pushed.
Compared to the Creamer Plus, it is the
more diffuse and laid-back of the two,
and its overall progression in tone from
clean to driven is very linear.
The Creamer Plus side is quite smooth
as its name implies, but it is the tighter
and punchier of the two channels.
Pushed into Pentode mode, it gets
aggressive with a nice vintage roughening of its sonic edges. This side offers a
touch more variety in its sonic choices
than the linear Berliner, thanks to the
Tridode/Pentode switching, the additional impedance bump, and the tube boost.
Both units are well-suited for use with
any mic you can throw at them and they
offer plenty of gain on condensers (most
of mine needed the input pad), as well
as dynamic mics and passive ribbons,
which benefit nicely from the impedance
choice. A Shure SM7 in high-impedance
mode sounds quite nice indeed. On
both models the SS output is cleaner,

more open, and has low end that
extends down a touch more, while the
OT transformer-coupled output is rounder
and weightier in the low mids.
The Fat and Air switches on each are
more subtle than I was expecting, but do
their job well to add weight or a gentle
top-end push. Pleasingly, they don't sound
like an added EQ curve. Instead, they
give a microphone's sound a change in
perceived weight and openness.
[Zoran Todorovic responds: "They can
get very intense, especially on the
Berliner side (and somewhat intense on
the Creamer side when in pentode
mode) when the trimpots, accessed from
the cover through small holes as previously mentioned by Paul, are cranked
up clockwise. Boris has a tendency to
ship them set very conservatively, but we
encourage users to try playing with them
to hear the depth and range of their
effect."]
While each channel worked well on
every source I threw at it, I did have
some favorites. For example: on male
rock vocals, the Berliner with both the Fat
and Air on setting 1 and the gain pushed
just to the point of breakup, gave a result
that was positively huge. I liked the

Creamer Plus a lot on snare in Pentode
mode, where it was nice and punchy.
However, my favorite use of both units
was on electric guitar amps. Using both
on one amp in a standard 2-mic setup, I
liked the Berliner best on ribbon mics
like the Royer R-121 or AEA N22, while
the Creamer Plus paired well with a
Shure SM57 and an Audix i5 pushed
into a medium impedance, with the +6
button adding more weight to the upper
mids. I also tried each channel with
some DI bass; here, the Berliner was my
favorite, as it offered a growl that was
more easily tailored to suit the track.
Conclusions
I keep asking myself which channel is
my favorite, and it keeps changing, I
like the laid-back vintage tone of the
Berliner just as much as the variable forward nature of the Creamer Plus.
Fortunately, if you're OK with only one
channel of each tone, then the Beamer
gives you the best of both worlds in one
elegant package.
Price: CAN$2450 (about US$1825)
More from: Sonic Farm, www.sonicfarm.com
http://www.sonicfarm.com http://cras.edu
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