Golden Age Project Pre-73 MKIII

Sounds great when it works.

Bought this a few years ago and it sounds great for the price. It broke down after the 2nd time i used it and had to send it back for repairs. The problem wasn't solved so i got the unit back, still broken and had to return it again. Then it worked for 2 days and broke down again and i stopped trying. But it's nice to look at. Bad luck i guess. The sound is great tho.

Great Neve 1073 workalike

Sounds great, and is a vast improvement over the original GAP Pre's. Overdrives great, the air band is a nice touch too.

My main applications for this currently would be vocals, acoustic guitar, drum room sounds and certain types of bass guitar sound. But, realistically, there's nothing this pre is 'bad' at at all!

Something to be aware of is that the LED signals the overall output level, which I don't always consider helpful. A means of knowing how much you're driving the chain before the output attenuator would probably be more useful to many of us.

Good !

Quite good stuff for the prize.

Game Changer

This has been a total game changing addition to my recording set up. Beautiful vintage sound with plenty of options available with the Air and and HP filter switches. Great on vocals, acoustic guitars and have also been getting great results DIing an electric guitar. For this price you really cannot go wrong. I've just ordered another one.

This is it!

I am super happy with my purchase, because now My vocals sound a lot more analoguish and warm! The unit perfoms super solid and you just hear the difference even with the dry vocal coming in!

Good to have

I use this preamp for all of my vocal recordings, and some times I use the DI for Guitar or Bass. It sounds nice with neutral settings and I love it's color when driven a bit more.

It's good to have for different results/outcomes and for me now It's on every vocal recording.

Very good preamp for home studio

I bought it for my home studio and use it with the Neumann TLM 102 microphone,FMR Audio RNC 1773 compressor and the Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 audio interface.

For me it is the best combination in this budget.

I recorded the voice and acoustic guitar and it sounds great.

Fantastic.....and VERY quiet

The reviews of this preamp all mention that it "colors" the signal....that is, it isn't "transparent". That may be, but the thing makes my voice sound good, and that's what I want.

Used with an MXL 990, I can run it with the gain so low that I don't hear ANYTHING in the way of noise. I find the thing amazing.

Boost your home studio

At first I felt sceptic about buying a device meant for one channel pre-amplification at a cost almost equal to well-balanced mid range audio interface. I thought it is going to be not so useful since, i.e. Focusrite and Audient build in pre-amps were really versatile (+ showed different spectrum for the same vocal) and gave me good quality for demo vocals and acoustic instrument.

Anyway, I decided that the time to expand has come. By addition of this Golden Age Pre to the recording chain, I understood that vocal can be richer and more naturally driven, vivid and open. My first impression is that this really helps me in mixing and gives me more clarity and understanding of what is being recorded and how the source of sound should eventually sound in the mix.

I'm not the best person to explain techinical details about this device, but I just wanted to share how I feel about it.

I believe this is the best purchase I made for the last.

Golden Ears

I've been using my pre-73 Mk3 for a couple of years now and I use on on pretty much everything. The drive is warm and incredibly good for such a relatively low cost unit. I have even fuzzed out a few vocal lines, though you do have to watch the top end. The line input also works great for bass guitars.

Plenty of headroom. Plenty of gain. Plenty of preamp for the money!