Goldmike 9844 : SPL Goldmike: More versatile than you think

You shouldn't buy this unit because you have seen the word 'tube' on it. But you should buy it for plenty of other reasons.

Although it does have a single tube on each channel, this only contributes a small amount of fixed gain to the overall sound, so it doesn't really have that typical sound you would associate with all tube preamps.

It does have exceptional distortion and noise stats, giving a very pure and clean signal, with a whopping 72dB of gain availabale. I liked that.

VU meters are incredibly small, to the point of almost being un-useful.

The 'flair' switch is a very fun feature, which is quite well described by it's name..

I used this mainly for passing stereo mixes through rather than a mic preamp, or for make up gain on passive summing boxes/EQ, as it does have a very special quality, but there are other, better preamps available.

The price point is excellent however, and you would be hard pressed to find a better spec'd 2 channel preamp for this.