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Links to some of the full Forum threads

• http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15245&sid=6f78a618bc27b98dbb604cd511fc2669 (Build thread on the lab)
• http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=46447&highlight=ba4

Reviews of Baby Animal Mic Pre kit

• Hi Joe

  Got back from London at the weekend to find my kits waiting for me :-) 

  Built them all now and realise that I'm liking the "baby animal" so much that I need to get another one and put two of them in a rack. So with that in mind I'd like to buy another BAD

  all the best

• Norman Blake (Teenage Fanclub) Glasgow

   

  "Hi Joe

  The recording session went really well. We ended up using the BAD to record Annie Whitehead's trombone. Signal path was Royer 121-BAD-Apogee AD-16x for conversion on to the drive of an Alesis HD24 for storage and ease of use (it has familiar transport buttons :-)

  I'm happy to say that she "loved" the sound that we got for her :-) We had the option of a few different pre's including pairs of V72's, V672's and API 512c's. So it's great that the BAD won out over those guys.

  I'll send some photo's and audio when I have some.

  all the best

  Norman" Blake (Teenage Fanclub) Glasgow

• Hi there Joe,

  Thanx for your quick reply. Just wanted to know if I did everything right.

  For our album we used the BA2 for:

  - guitar: 2 room mics (akg 414TLII + 414ULS);

  - bass guitar: straight into the DI; and

  - lead and backing vocals.

  Everything sits very nice in the mix, without pushing stuff away in the frequencies.

  It's a very very useful and good sounding unit and am very happy I bought it.

   Kind regards,

  Marco

   

• Hi Joe

•  

• I realised your correct that these voltages were not showing because I did not have the op amp fitted. So I plugged it in and it works fine and sounds superb. I would describe the sound as "intimate" - it's that sound when a vocalist sounds like he/she is a few centimetres from you.  When you plug into a f*#kusrite it has that generic sound which sounds distanced from the mic regardless of the eq you use.  The BA however is the antithesis.  This kind of "intimacy" in a vocal sound is something I have been trying to find for a long time. Also the preamp has a sort of de-essing effect naturally which I am really pleased with. Thanks for such a great pre. My search for a vintage quality pre is over and I spent about 1/10 of the money I expected.

   

  Cheers

  Rich

Hi Joe,

I’ve been getting some fantastic drum sounds with these pre’s and my dual 99v’s. The cinemag’s sound fantastic in the Baby A’s!!

Absolutely loving the sounds I got from a dw kit (well the dw kit wont hurt it at all) on a session I did on wed night. Awesome!! Such a change from my old recordings!!

And I love the fact that I can build these things for the same price I sell off my old joe meek/studio projects pre’s.

My recordings no longer sound like they’re done in a home studio. J Legend!!!  Thanks again,

Stephen Sheath  New Zealand

•  

  Joe, just wanted to let you know that I compared the 99v to my John Hardy this weekend. I used a KSM44 mic and had my friend demo his mandolin. The 99v blew the JH away I mean bad, the 99v replicated the woody tone and the thump on the low end. The John Hardy seemed thin in comparison. Anyway just wanted to let you know I'm very happy with it.

  Thanks
  Jason, USA

  Hi Joe,

  Thanks for sending out those pins, finally got the preamp done and it sounds fantastic. It utterly destroys the preamps on my MOTU interface.

  Joseph Strevens, New Zealand

  Hi Joe,

  A couple of months back I ordered some baby animal mic pres from you, just wanted to let you know that having used them on a variety of projects now I’m really happy with their performance. I’m hearing the true potential of my mics for the first time, and I can’t get over how smooth they sound. Things just sit in the mix so much more easily and my recordings seem sweeter and more transparent than I’ve ever been able to achieve before. Thanks for designing such a great product! I’ll definitely be back for more… 

  Cheers, Peter Delahunty. Australia

   

• Hey Joe!  couple of things...I finished my baby animals and they sound FANTASTIC.  The 1:4+99V is one of the best pres I've ever heard.  Sounds great on pretty much everything I've tried.  Next to the melcors I racked up they are way BIGGER and smoother sounding. 
• Thanks!
  Kevin
   
• Hi Joe,
  
  thank you very much for outstanding support and an outstanding preamp! Resoldering those pads did the trick. Plugged it in, the thing really rocks! Not only on vocals but on everything I tried it on. Great overall smoothness yet transients get through very well, definition in the bass and a shiny high end. No flaws. I love what it does to my Shakuhachi. And had a lot of fun building the pre (and learned a ton as well :-)). Will post a review as soon as I get my prodigy-pro account activated.
  Now I'm thinking about getting another pair... and I read something about a compressor kit your planning... :-)
  
  Kind regards,
  Gregor, USA
   
• This thing sounds fantastic. Some of my mics that I previously didn't like at all now sound very usable. I've only tried it on a couple things, and my listening environment was a little tainted as I just temporarily plugged the output into a line in on my mackie, but even still- it's obvious that this is a terrific mic pre. The sound is very smooth, but without sounding "fuzzy" like some smooth pres often sound to my ears. The DI also sounds awesome. My P-Bass sounded spectacular and was the best sound I've got out of that bass, and my strat sounded great as well. My wife's lapsteel sounded really clear, and I'm looking forward to getting my brother in law in here to try his lapsteel through it. He's also a great guitar player and songwriter, so we'll be recording some of his stuff with this very soon.
  
  I'm really stoked! This pre is a great value. I'm really shocked at how good they sound, and would reccomend them highly. I can't wait to do some real recording with them. I'll definitely report back when I've put them through their paces a little more. Now I'm going to have to get another kit for this Jensen JT-115k-E I have sitting here and try the Hybrid opamp...
  _________________
  Jeremy Miller
• Before I talk about the sound, let me say that my preamp experience is with a Behringer rack unit, my Mackie mixer, Presonus Firebox, and an MBox. That said, this thing blows the pants off any of those. It is pants-blowingly awesome. Everything I've put through it has automatically turned into the best sound I've gotten out of that instrument. Guitar and bass through the DI are especially awesome, very smooth. After about an hour of playing guitar through the Baby Animal and then into a Marshall patch in Guitar Rig 2, I switched over to the Presonus pre, and it was harsh! I had the volume cranked, and at the same gain as the BA it was painful, whereas the Baby Animal was quite pleasing. I'm very happy with this. After I placed my order, I wondered if I'd notice enough of a difference to justify the cost. Five minutes of testing erased any doubts I had. I also realized how good a 57 can be, and...er...how bad my Studio Projects C1 is.
  
  Again, I'd like to stress how awesome this kit is. It is a cinch to build and sounds great. Joe is a great guy and answered my questions very promptly (while politely suggesting I come here and bug you guys.) Send him your money!!
   
• Cheers,
  Chris
• OK, I just finished building my second Baby Animal, this time with the Hybrid opamp instead of the OPA2604. I plugged my guitar into the DI, thinking I'd test it out for a few minutes to see if it worked. When I checked the time, an hour had passed. This thing is a joy to play through--I've never heard myself sound so good!!
  
  I can't A/B it directly at the moment (because I unhooked my first channel to test this one) but when I get them both wired into the rack, I'll do a more comprehensive test. It definetely sounds different...the JLM hybrid page says it has a super tight low-end, and it definetely does--the 2604 sounds a bit muddy in comparison. I have to play with it some more, but I think I may order another hybrid kit and replace the 2604 in my first channel with it. It's also worth noting that so far I'm not having the oscillation problem I'm having with my 2604 pre. I'm going to check all my joints and resolder some parts and see if it corrects the problem.
  
  I think my favorite thing about the hybrid is that Joe seemingly laid out the parts on the PCB so it looks like a one-eyed robot pirate grimacing at you. You may notice there's no smiley on the PCB unlike most of Joe's products, but it's OK. Why silkscreen a smiley face when the components can form a robot pirate instead? I don't know either.
  
  Yaaarr!!
  
  The larger point I want to make is that with either a 2604 or the hybrid, the Baby Animal sounds fantastic. You cannot go wrong buying this kit. If you're on the fence, hop on over, because over here on Joe's side, it sounds great. Thanks to Joe for making such an awesome kit.
  
  Cheers,
  Chris
   
• After some really stupid mistakes and corrective measures I've got all 4 of my pre's up and running. Instead of testing the sound here at home I brought them to my real studio (not my crappy home studio with the M-audio FW410 and Alesis M-1 mII speakers ) and hot damn if they don't kick ass all over the Focusrite pre's we have used for years. We spent a lot of money setting this studio up and have actually got some of the best (Rock) guitar sounds in Minneapolis. I know this is presumptous but we are usually booked solid with work from musicians wanting to do their guitar overdubs with us. Now the guitars are even better. Our first paying customers since finishing the pre's are in studio this week and we'll see how they respond, but I think they'll love them. Thanks Joe for your help. You too Matt. I'm surely gonna be buying the dual 99v and the micro 1290 to flesh out the arsenal as soon as a few more jobs come in.
  
  Awesome!
  
  p.s. The pre's I bought are: 2 99v/JLM14; 1 99v/OEP; Hybrid(A/B)/OEP. I'm gonna do at least one more BA with a lundahl/oep combo in addition to the micro and dual 99v.
• Brad
   
• Now I only had a quick muck around with some bongo's & percussion in my room with a couple of different mics, so I didn't get too much of a chance to form on opinion on this combo..............but so far to my ears, it sounds very quick and snappy, and It's gonna end up on snare when I do some drum recordings later this week.
  
  It's got stacks of gain too. Way more than i expected!!
  
  As for the different parts I kinda went with similar stuff to what is on Joes page, but for the Lundahl 1578 as they're both a 10:1 ratio.
  Not exactly a scientific approach, but hey it works, and it works well
  
  Only prob I found with the cinemag, is when I tried swapping out the IC for my 99v op-amp out of my other pre. Too tight a fit for a cinmeag & a 99v without bending the board too much.
  
  Otherwise, another happy camper round here.
• Lowfreq, New Zealand
   
• In my previous post I promised a review of the session from last week...
  We actually had the chance to record with all of the pre's I built. As a recap here is what I built: 2x jlm14/99v; oep/99v; oep/hybrid. The results were pretty straight forward against our commercial fucusrites.
  
  The guitars used were a Yamaha Aes800(my favorite guitar) and a Gretsch (forgot the model). These were run through either a Marshall TSL100 and/or a Peavey 5150 using the Marshall cabs for both. We then mic'd both amps with a Crowley and Tripp ribbon mic(Awesome! And loud enough with the BA's available gain) and believe it or not a shure Beta Green 2.0 vocal mic. The First pre I tried on this setup was the jlm14/99v's combo. Holy crap! Is all I heard from the band and my studio engineer. Funny thing is I showed up late to the session so they started using the fucusrites and had comp tracks to a/b them with. The guitars went from indistinct to open and sat right in the mix where it was needed. Very little eq was used(mic placement being a major factor) but we always had to fidget a little with the FR's. For shit's and giggles we tried the oep pre's but weren't as happy with them as we were with the jlm14's. The funny thing is that the FR's sounded great before we had these BA's. Now I don't know if we'll use them again. My engineer wants to order a stereo pair of a bunch of the combo's listed on this thread.
  
  Bass on the otherhand was all about the oep/99v combo. We used a Spector bass the the BA, to the drawmer comp direct to the computer. This was the best sounding signal path we could come up with. There is also ton's of gain on this pre. I think the Spector bass has some odd tonality and just didn't get enough thickness out of the jlm14/99v. The hybrid loaded pre was great but didn't give quite the definition as the oep/99v. All of these differences were very audible. We never once had to second guess the tones as being too close to tell.
  
  Vocals. This is one of the complaints i have about our studio. Our two vocal mic's aren't the typical Hi-End studio mic's. But The one we use on the right people with the right pre can sound amazing. It's a B.L.U.E. Dragonfly special edition. We get very mixed results with this mic. On certain people it's very bright and thin and on others it's perfect. Lot's o'eq'ing and stuff. Well luckily the 3 guys in the band that sang sounded good through this mic and with the oep loaded pre's we found the right sounds. The jlm14/99v's sounded a little "honky" on vox. Don't know if this is the Vocalists, the mic, the pre(my assembly) or a combo of any of those things. But needless to say the mic wasn't as brittle as it was previously and turned out quite the recording. Oddly the real telling point between the Hybrid and the 99v was in the top end. On vocals at least. the mid's were pretty close and didn't sound all that different but the top end on one vocalist would pop out at you while the other pre would pull it back a little. Obviously the range and timbre of the vocalist really dictated what pre would go where. I admit to messing up one thing though. I forgot to right down which pre was giving which tones while I was working on vocals. I am reciting my memories of the vocal session. The guitar and bass sessions I had extensive notes but not on vox.
  
  So anyway, I hope this helps a little. I'm not a professional reviewer so could not find all the right adjectives to describe everything(Silky top end, smooth or fast transients and that sort of thing) but hope my amuturish desciptions help a little.
  
  Later all,
  
  Brad
   
• I had fun doin some drums on the weekend. Got some very tight snappy sounds outta a Tama superstar birch kit. I may get some clips up once I've finished off the track.
  
  Couple of dual 99v's on the oh's while my Baby A's worked on the snare top and bottom.
  
  Very Nice............ Makes my job so much easier
• Lowfreq, New Zealand