It shouldn’t be news to anyone at this point that last year Rupert Neve passed away. He was a legend of Audio Technology and the grandfather to modern recording. He started his first company, NEVE in true DIY fashion, out of his home, building large format studio consoles that would shape the sound of music for decades. His designs have become so synonymous with high quality recording that many NEVE style clones have been developed to capture that same signature sound. Even in the world of DIY.
When I started looking to build my first DIY preamp, I certainly coveted that NEVE sound. I had recently been using some modern and vintage NEVE preamps at my job, teaching audio to students in Newcastle, and was amazed at how those NEVE preamps just immediately had that “sound” as soon as you ran signal through them. Whether it be a bass DI, a Neumann u87 capturing vocals or an sm57 on a guitar cab, the sounds I’d heard on many records seemed so readily dialed in. And so my search for a DIY preamp began… Diving through the trenches of audio nerd forums, I spent many procrastinatory toilet hours researching who’s version of a DIY Neve preamp I should purchase. There were a surprising amount of options, and many heated debates online on who’s product was most genuine, cost effective or usable in the 500 series format. All of these being important to me, I went with Sound Skulptor.
The Sound Skulptor MP573 seemed to cover all the bases. Genuine Carnhill input and output transformers – check! Hi-Z instrument input (in the front) – check! Front panel switches for impedance, polarity and phantom power – check! Easy to read build instructions, check and check! All of this came in at around $500 AUD and the only additional cost would be my time and labor. That’s a huge saving of money even considering build time, as of writing this a genuine neve 500 series preamp costs anywhere from $1500 to $2000 AUD.
Now I’ve already posted a build video and for those of you that missed it I’ll post it again here;
But needless to say, the build was easy, well documented and all went smoothly.
The most important thing is, how does it sound? Well, it sounds like a NEVE 1073!!! And by that I mean it sounds pretty damn AWESOME. It has that characteristic low frequency weight with nice crisp sounding highs. It lends itself well to any mic I paired it with, but I was most surprised on how it worked with simple dynamic mics such as my sm57’s. Everyone has heard people say, you can use a 57 on anything. What they may have forgot to mention is that this is much truer a statement when you’re pairing that sm57 with an amazing sounding preamp.
The mic preamp has more than enough gain for mic like my sm7b and RM-5 Ribbon mics, and the impedance switch can also give them a little extra oomph if necessary. I’ve also recently learned that the impedance switch, at 300ohms, particularly on dynamic mics, also adds extra low end weight that can be amazing on bass, guitars and drums. Very glad that this was included in the build.
The DI on the MP573 is also outstanding. Instantly running my bass guitar through this DI, I could hear bass tones from famous records that I’d struggled to replicate using my old DI inputs on my interface. The bass guitar sounded more polished, richer, fuller and closer to already being mixed. Then I though of something a little crazy. What would my electric guitar sound like through this DI?
I’ve never heard a DI guitar sound I liked, unless it was coming from Nile Rogers….well guess what? He used a bloody NEVE for that sound too. And man…. this DI does sound sweet on clean guitar. Playing into the preamp, I could feel the subtle saturation happening just like on an actual guitar amplifier. Maybe that’s the secret when in comes to transformers in mic preamps. If I can feel that saturation while playing guitar, and play into it, maybe that’s what singers and other artists feel too. What a Vibe! I’ll have to do more research on this.
Nevertheless this thing is a brilliant piece of kit, and I’m glad I brought two of them, because they’ll definitely be getting used, a lot. Jean-Pierre from Sound Skulptor has done an amazing job on these kits. Not only are they full of great components, but they are well documented and reasonable to build providing you know how to solder and if you don’t, you can buy them prebuilt for a little extra. The end result is a mic preamp that is faithful to Rupert Neve’s original design, quality of sound and a workhorse preamp that I’ll be using forever in my studio.
#Soundskulptor #MP573 #DIY Mic Preamp #REview #Neve 1073 #thediyrecordingstudio
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