the ferralgrapha has passed all the tests and has left the building. wow. he is awesome so so sweet sounding. the mic sound is fat . clean and solid. 50/150/600 mic balanced input types make for very useable tone variations with any mic. the special extra amp stage gets very miles of gain for the ribbon mics. the eq is tight or deliciously wide. very flavour enriched. wow, it sounds so so alive. im hearing my records for the first time again. theres a weird effect with good tube circuits – suddenly the music just really feels like something again. just so big and warm – all the soul regained purified of any digital scurge. and the very back background feeling gets clear. my freakin spine is tingling. thanks alex for letting me build this. man u are going to love it. your stunning microphone collection will love the ferralgrapha too.
a client had purchased a heap of black lion audio gear . he has liked the sound from the units – and reckoned they represented quite good ‘sonic trustworthy’ value — except for the build quality and control component (pots) quality and robustness. dam cheap little things. busted and broken after only a bit of use. i discovered that quite alot of them weren’t even soldered in … like – at all at all- just sitting there ‘plugged’ into the board – no soldering. w.t.f. anyway… after he’d tried my gyrator ten8tor luxury stereo eq (loved it’s sound and quality) he decided to have me turn his dual mono black lion gear into stereo control stuff . wow. i did not see that coming. crazy? yes! dumb? no! so far i’ve stripped the mono parts off the black lion boards. and prepped some metalwork and collected the strange value stereo pots and parts.
ive drilled up the panel and letterstamped it. it’s been bent to fit the cabinet properly and is getting anodized as i type. while it is soaking . i’ll finish and test the tube chassis. 8 tubes . 6 signal transformers. my evolved prototype chassis sounds great – really open feeling microphone sound. the tube amps – the very flavorful equalizing possibilities - and the in/external monitoring functionality make the ferralgrapha a complete one machine for studio or live recording sessions.
zebulon wrote me the day after he picked up his new minifenk control room monitor station.
Hi Greg,
the fenk sounds great, I listened to music for a couple of hours last night. I
instantly noticed the mid range was not smeary, snare drums sounded tighter & overall
it sounded like there was more space & depth in that range. The low end seems to be
more defined, so frequencies in the upper low range sound less boomy, low lows sound
tight & thick. The high frequencies sound less fatigued & cloudy. In a nutshell, it
sounds like I have removed a kind of hifi emulation in my signal path.
I love this thing, it sounds fantastic, thank you very much. Zeb.
the commando is a naked preamp with no annoying reach around issues. read on. its inputs and outputs and controls are all all right there up front. . perfect. theres no reach around issues. its actually a lot easier and efficient to assemble all the components of this multichannel preamp on one surface. then u can build a chassis with a power supply in the corner - totally prewire a whole amplifier circuit unit of pretested channels. - pre assemble the control and interface parts onto the clean conductive panel - stop for lunch - make the grounding sheilding conductivity of the panel / chassis / cabinet. – trim and attach all the wireing to the controls and switches . and boom. turn it on . almost dinner time. (i wish) but actually very efficient. very easy to be super tidy. all the wireing at the inputs is as short and direct as possible. more like a point to point style construction. more robust too. nothing flimsy – just strong hardwired connections. the amplifiers themselves are the sexchanger transistor designs. simple tough hi fidelity amps from the late seventies. yes they are quiet running and super fat gain cells. big and clean, and yes . they can distort if you push them. there is a fine cross adjustment between level in. amp stage gain , and pickup amp volume. well worth the journey. the quad unit contain two stage amps. im considering a three stage design – for super clean super full on 80 db gain. or beastly extra fucked up distortion. extra squared square with your square.
