JLM 99v Mic Pre reviews

Capturing Audio without Injury Ph +617 38912244 or Skype jlm.audio or MSN / email joe@jlmaudio.com
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Reviews

Joe, I rigged up the big rig over the last week and recorded some guitar amp signal into my desk. It sounds FANTASTIC. I have also done some vocals through the 99V and they sound really nice too. I certainly won’t need another mic pre for vocals it seems. The bassist I am working with (top player and session hero) was really impressed by the sounds I was pulling as well.
Steve Turner
Hi Joe,
I forgot to tell you that Dan and i did comparison with your 99v and BSG's A-design Pacifica.

On Vox - The 99v blew the Pacifica away. It was surprisingly obvious. 99v sounded thicker, more present, bigger, more open and had a much smoother and silkier midrange.

Acoustic Guitar - The 99v again was better than the pacifica. The Pacific was good for fast strumming parts. The 99v was better at pretty much everything else.

Your 99v is a hidden Gem. Anyone looking to buy a pre will get my two thumbs up for it.

Alex Jordan
I bought one of Joe's mic pre kits with his opamps a while back, I've been putting it together in my bits of free time for the last several weeks and after a little ado, finished everything up tonight. I went with a Lundahl 1578 1:5 on the input, used two of Joe's 99v opamps in a design he laid out feeding a 2503 1:1. I've got the whole thing running at +/- 34 V using the jlm supply.

This may be a little bold to say, but I think this is the most insane mic pre I have ever heard in my life. I've never heard a smooth midrange like this in my life without having to sacrifice lack of definition in the bottom end. This is BUTTER smooth in the mids and totally tight and solid in the bottom. I haven't used it on a session yet, but I anticipate the high end rolling off nicely, I absolutely can not wait to use this on a drum kit. Once I got the grounding right, its SILENT. the noise floor with the gain full up is not at a noticeable change from the gain all the way down... This thing is QUIET.

Certainly this will draw some obvious comparisons, but I have never heard anything do what this does. NOTHING. I'm actually a little besides myself, I wasn't expecting to DIY something that completely trumps just about everything in my studio...

If you've been considering building one of these, by all means, get Joe's 99v opamps for your kit. I cant say enough good about this. If you love the sound of your neve but hate the cloudy bottom, this is SOOOO the solution, its that idea, but perfected. Man, I thought I had heard silky mids until I heard this...

If class A had to have a sound in a dictionary, this should be it. Try out Joe's opamps, you might be shatteringly amazed.

dave (USA) Glide on Fade

hy
oh boy, still can't stop listening to the guitars I've recorded with my new dual 99v from Joe Malone.
that's the thing. smooth, super smooth in the midrange, and those high frequencies make me fell in heaven. thanks Joe.
used lundhal transformer 1538 in, and no transformer. out.
got to go to the studio to record more things. then I'll tell ya `bout it.
thanks Joe.
best regards
pedro (Portugal)
alo
just to say i am recording my new record, and all the guitars were done with 99v I got from Joe. wish I had more.
think i am giving a call to Joe in the near future.
best regards
Pedro (Portugal)
It's alive..!!
Writing about how something sounds is totally alien to this old boy, but here goes.....
IT'S LARGE, round, thick and juicy.
Only shoved my voice on a 57 in front of it so far, but it sounds great.
I'll test more over the next few and report back.
peter (London)
SEND JOE YOUR MONEY

peter (London)

I have tested the JLM99V against the Forssell 992 on a servo micpre. Input transformers was JT13k7-A and JT-16-B. Very different from each other, yet both desirable and amazing in sound.

It's kinda hard to describe sound as usual, but I found the 99V to be more dry, in a good way.
Transparent if you prefer. You don't hear any frequency in excess, there's a very good tone balance. The 992 sound fatter by comparison, like if it is compressing the signal a little bit. The presence of both are different and again, interesting.

I choose the 99V to track in the drum room mic, just perfect.

many cheers to you, I'm in love with your 99V.
Fabio (Brazil)

Greetings folks:

I have been reading posts here for a short while and decided to jump into some projects. I have built several guitar stompers, but am new to recording DIY. So, I have ordered kits from several folks around here to get my feet wet. My first project is complete, so I thought I'd introduce myself and share a few comments.

First to arrive was Joe Malone's JLM kit. As this is was my first project, I had several rather basic (read bonehead) questions, and made some rather simple mistakes. Every email that I sent to Joe was returned quickly with thoughtful and considerate responses.

I ordered the power supply, JLM99V (with OEP transformer) and DI. The final product is remarkably quiet and sounds fantastic. In a first round of tests on male vocals and acoustic guitar, it held up superbly compared to my other mic pres.

Thanks for all the great info and resources here!

Best regards

Tom (USA)
I love the JLM boards though and find that mounting the transformer off board is a plus in my world. I have populated five of these boars so far in various configurations.
He even makes a very affordable 1:4 mic input transformer. The man is a DYNAMO!

Tamas (USA)
The jlm 99 pre is insanely good and versatile. You can put just about any transformer you want in there, bunches of people have heard the box I built at this point and *everyone* who has heard it has stopped in their tracks. The dual opamp pre that joe designed has a ton of gain and I used it to track vocals with a royer sf1 which is typically pretty picky about needing a good amount of clean gain. Depending on which transformers you elect to use, you can set it up to get you a wide variety of sounds and you can also use just about any opamp in there that has that standard 990 footprint. I think Joes 99v opamp is really incredible though. If you go through the trouble of putting this kit together and you don't like the way it sounds, you could always go back and change the transformers and opamps with EASE and have a totally different sounding pre- its highly configurable, so doing the wiring for the boards allows you to make a few decisions about the exact sound you want down the line, you could put a handful of transformers in the input position, use anything you want more or less on the output and use a 1731, 2520, hardy 990, forssell 990 or the JLM 99v OR use a chip. Lots of options. With a 1:5 input, dual 99v's and a 1:1 output this thing puts out more gain than I need, I added a switch which keeps the second opamp at unity which is really useful I think...

dave (USA) Glide on Fade
Hi Joe,

Just a quick note to say that I finally got the 99v pre up and going. Had to wait a while for a tech friend to do the AC stuff for me, but now……………………………….WOW!! this thing blew me away!! This is my first REAL preamp, as everything I’ve used has been low end $300 stuff, so the sound really caught me off guard. Now I understand a bit more what people are talking about. Absolutely awesome!!. I can’t wait to use it in a real session.

Thanks for all your help with my questions, and I’m glad to say everything worked first time. No fault finding necessary, which was great for a newbie like me, and you’ll definitely be hearing from me again once I’ve saved up some more $$ for another 99v channel.

Kind regards

Stephen Sheath (New Zealand)
If you build a JLM kit with his opamp, I would imagine that you'd use it for the rest of your life, its that good. Not very difficult to build either. The racking and power supply and all that stuff is gonna be the same no matter what you build, so you might as well put something really cool in the box. Of course a 312 style thing would be way cool along with a list of other stuff, but the JLM 99v opamps are insanely good.

Pretty much, any transistor thing you chose to build that we talk about here is gonna be more or less about the same difficulty, more or less.

dave (USA) Glide on Fade

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