Looking to grab a couple budget preamps, could use suggestio

[crochambeau]

just a little sterile

gain staging

Hey Psyre, curious, what is your driving philosophy regarding levels? Do you push your signal as far as you can before stuff starts to fizzle out? If you're looking for character/girth injection I would expect you are... don't be afraid to do weird shit like slap an old stereo cassette recorder in record/pause (monitored) in the chain, sometimes it only takes one cascading gain section to make all the difference.

There are a lot of duds out there, but some gear opens up nicely when you hit it hard, be ruthless in your endeavours.

[Psyre]

I run it as open as I can into the mixer. Most channels are at unity with subtle gain on the board. Bass is below unity about 6db.
Then out to the track, master fader is right under 8. Each track is only at about 4-5 on each fader.

I'm in the process of setting up so I can run compression and bass eq up front. I think that and the new mics (opposed to slightly anemic sounding dynamics)

[crochambeau]

Are you being careful to keep your levels out of RED?

[Psyre]

A little on the 4 track in the ballpark of about +3db on the bass guitar and when OD is on the guitar on heavier portions.

[Psyre]

On an added note, has anyone done the insulation rolls as bass trap in corner method I've heard of?

[John]

On an added note, has anyone done the insulation rolls as bass trap in corner method I've heard of?

Not exactly but have done similar things with other materials. It's useful in tuning the room, but may only have minimal effect on recordings if you're close-micing things.

Have you tried using a high pass filter on any tracks? You could just use your outboard EQ. Basically, often some lack of clarity on the top end comes from muffly distortion on the bottom. All those frequencies are vying for analog bandwidth and it's like having an emergency ward full of large people with hangnails and one little guy with a bleeding femoral artery. Trim some of the fluff out and get to the important shit. Trapping some resonant bass shit in the room is good, but the audio source itself might need some pruning.

I know people gag when anyone says Behringer, but the T-1953 preamp has every feature you need on a preamp including variable high pass filters, phase reverse, and control over the amount of tube saturation. Also it's the only tube pre that actually has 2 tubes, one for each channel. The rest share one tube for 2 channels, and often not at full plate voltage. It's not prestigious gear but I have used them in many applications and they work exactly as I want them to. They even make for a great guitar preamp as the distortion is totally useable. And they're cheap.

I might also be selling one...

[rfurtkamp]

Behringer's mixing stuff is actually stupid good these days, it *shouldn't* be, but ...it works.