Art v3 mic pre, surprisingly good.

[Twincam]

I recently bought the ubiquitous art v3 tube mic pre, used. 

Came with a tad 7025 high grade 12ax7. 

 

Surprisingly decent. Can do clean to warmer tones nicely. And pushing the gain brings out more hair to out and out distortion. Which I actually found surprisingly useable, not brittle. Does add sustain and dynamics nicely, even at lower gain. With gain and output cranked the noise level was very low. Might be the 7025hg helps, which it's supposed to. 

 

Various voice settings do work and each has a slightly different if sometimes subtle effect.

My favourite is the warm valve setting. Seems to be higher output and warmer and more valve like, go figure haha. 

 

Maybe a little uneven in string reaction, I had to mess about with pickup height to get it more even. Not helped by the old strings I'm using. 

 

Gain control is not as linear as i would of liked. Very tiny adjustments needed at times, which i found a faff on. I suppose its just what you get when using cheaper equipment and the starved plate circuit design. 

Think I might try a 12au7, supposedly more linear with lower power circuits. 

 

Yeah it's not going to be as good as an ebs valve drive. But i think i actually like it more than a dha vt1 eq I had, which maybe had to much going on for me, so maybe my fault for not getting the most out of the vt1. 

 

For 40 quid used I think I got a bargain.