What is the best affordable tube preamp?

[destinytot]

I recently got a Harley Benton American Tone pedal, which seems to be identical to the Joyo pedal. 30€ and it makes an acoustic amp sound like a Fender on the edge of breaking up.

+1. Excellent pedal.

Not tube, but looking forward to receiving a custom JazzTone (formerly PolyClone) pedal at the end of May, which I read about in the Polytone? in a Pedal thread.

[docsteve]

Actually, the Joyo / Harley Benton pedal is meant to be a SansAmp Blonde copy. Forgot to mention that in my inital post.

[mr. beaumont]

I use a SansAmp blonde when I want to get a "tubey" tone from my polytone or henriksen...I have not used it for recording, however.

In a live environment, it works great. Very believable fender-ish tone. Supposedly, it has "cabinet simulation" built in...I really need to try it for recording.

[helios]

Would something like a Mesa cab-clone simulator work for your needs? I have one built into my amp and it works quite well, but they are sold separately too ($299 USD):

Guitar Cabinet Simulators | MESA/Boogie(R)







I notice their tube pre-amplifiers are fairly pricey and I've never used one ($1499 USD):

Tube Pre-Amplifier Series | MESA/Boogie(R)

[Spook410]

I sometimes use a Joyo American and it's sorta kinda adequate. Certainly entertaining. It's better than a Henrikson by itself and makes a rig you can schlep in a day pack liveable. Don't think it would be a great choice for recording.

Off Topic: if you like things like the DTAR Equinox (no longer made) or various Radial Engineering boxes, you may like the Grace Design's Felix. Expensive but lower price point models are available. Amazing box and absolutely worth the money.

[tonyp145]

A Tech21 rep told me the SansAmp uses EQ (probably just high and low pass filters) to simulate the effect of guitar speakers, it's pretty mild and they say it wouldn't interfere much with a true speaker emulating device, though I think there's a button to bypass that EQ stage so that gives you the opportunity to A/B it.

I've been experimenting with the Para Driver DI to sculpt the tone of my L4 through a PA, it offers a lot of tone shaping options plus a drive knob that adds a subtle amount of harmonic distortion to warm up the signal, might be worth looking into for the OP. But I just ordered a Pro35 lavaliere mic to get a more true acoustic tone. Now this thread has me thinking about picking up the ART V3 preamp to warm up the sound and provide phantom power to the mic. My wife hates you guys. ;-)

[boatheelmusic]

There's a brand new listing here on the forum for a great deal in a tube preamp.....

[DRS]

I have an Art tube pre. Around $75 and it works. Good for recording direct as well. It also helps for recording a mic for vocals. It has one 12AX7. Presonus makes something similar for maybe a little more money.

I have one. It works Ok - barely perceptible.

[DRS]

The Sarno Musical Solutions gear is top quality and reasonably priced (Fair warning, I'm listed as artist/endorser on the website)

I have the Black Box that I use to warm things up in front of 'amps-du-jour'. I know a lot of folks are using them with modeling and recording gear. It may not be listed on the website, but mine is made with an internal switch for US/Euro voltage)

I also use the Classic Tube Preamp as part of my main concert rig. It's essentially the front of a Fender Twin in a 1U rack space.


Sarno Music Solutions l Finest Audio Electronic Gear - Quality and Tone You Can Trust


PK

Sarno stuff is first rate.

[Cunamara]

I've also got the SansAmp Para Driver DI and it works pretty well. I've run it straight into a powered speaker with good results, especially with my archtop. It can sound pretty warm but seems to resist getting muddy (I've maybe not gotten extreme enough with it). Excellent battery life, too. Has bass-treble-sweepable mids plus drive and gain. XLR and 1/4 out, line or instrument out, etc. It's pretty flexible. I also have a SansAmp GT2 and I think for jazz the PDDI is a much better choice- the GT2 has a big Fendery mid scoop, does rock stuff pretty well.

And finally I have a Zoom MS100BT which is an excellent pedal with some very good sounds baked in and more readily added via a smart phone and Bluetooth. Amp models, lots of effects, etc. I've also used that straight into the powered speaker with really good results. But the battery life with that one is really short, just 4 hours with 2 AA batteries. Best to use a power adapter.

[rickshapiro]

If you looking strictly for recording, if you are using a DAW that takes plugins there are tons of great software emulations of preamps and tape that can warm up your sound. Do it in the box.

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

[Little Jay]

While a tube-preamp will give the tonal coloration of a tube (although I doubt that will differ much from a good solid state or MosFet), it will not make you sound like you are playing through a tube amp because you miss the biggest element of it: the way the output transformer interacts with the speaker. The output transformer causes he speaker's cone(s) to add mechanically created harmonic rich overtones that are not generated in the signal delivered to the speaker’s terminals by the amplifier. It also increases the level of bass output. I think this effect is underestimated and largely responsible for how a tube amp sounds. The only way to get that is to play through a tube amp.

That being said, Award Session emulates the output transformer in their solid state amps with something called Dynamic Feedback. That interacts directly with the speaker and it's behavior, it's NOT an EQ-filter. I think they do a pretty good job with it, my Session BluesBaby 22 is the most tube-like sounding solid state amp I know of.

Just some food for thought....

*edit: just to be clear: transistor amps do not have an output transformer and of course recording preamps/interfaces don't either. Modeling amps and guitar-amp-software are emulating the overtones created by the OT in a digital way.

[grahambop]

If you looking stricky for recording, if you are using a DAW that takes plugins there are tons of great software emulations of preamps and tape that can warm up your sound. Do it in the box.

Also if you use Audacity you can try this for free, google the Voxengo free VST plugins. (The Audacity online help or wiki page has details of how to install VST plugins).

The Voxengo plugins have loads of parameters for different amp, cab, mic position settings, you can play around with them for hours!

When doing this in Audacity, I clone the 'original' guitar track to a new track, then mute the original track. That way I can mess about as much as I like with the amp emulations etc. applied to the new track, but I can always get back to the original and start again if I want to, or if I mess something up in the new track.