Thinking about buying an Ma5, but it has no pad. Has this been a problem for recording loud drummers on OH, kick, or snare? Or is the gain and output trim sufficient.

Thanks for you input

output trim is more than sufficient. lovely pre for drums. engage that 28k button and sit back and smile.

Thanks for the reply.
Anyone else?

As said above no problem at all.. Used it several times on kick/snare and OH..
The MA5 has a tremendous headroom.. Plus the trim knob will help not to clip your converters and it's more than adeguate for that.. 28k button is a nice bonus if you need more sparkle or in case of some "dark" ribbons..

It has a nice heft and thickness ime. Love it.

Imho can't go wrong..

Fwiw here is a review I wrote several years ago:
Avedis Audio MA5



Cheu

I use MA5 on drums regularly with no pad. It's no problem at all.

Wonderful piece of kit. Versatile gain staging. No problems on drums (or loud guitars, or quiet sources, or when using ribbons). Just buy it and track something. Best of luck.

My favorite preamp! You'll be fine with loud sources. It's starts at 15dbs of gain.

I noticed it starts with really low numbers on the gain dial compared to other preamps that use the Marconi style gain knobs.
I pulled the trigger on one.

Avedis makes a $35 plug-in line pad called pad-z. You could always try one if you have problems.

The Pad Avedis makes is a LINE pad. It's meant to enter into the MA5 with a line level signal.. in order to have correct level AND impedance when (for exemple) passing the mix through the MA5's.
Use the line pads and put the gain at 35db's and the output trim fully clockwise (at 0db).

Yes, but afaik it's not meant to pad a microphone level signal..

I have yet to see a microphone clipping my MA5. Even when I use the Violet Design mics (which are among the hottest output signal mics I own) I'm far from clipping the INPUT stage of the MA5.
When I'm using hot output mics (like the Violet Amethyst Vintage), I have the gain knob on the MA5 at minimum 15 or maximum 20db and attenuate with the output trim knob to match my preferred level for hitting the converters (in my case between -12 and -9 peaks).
Of course you could also push the input stage (gain) more and attenuate more.. depending what do you want to achieve. But don't worry about clipping the pre.
At its tremendous headroom is very hard to clip the MA5.



Cheu

Put it to,use yesterday. Tested it on kick and mono OH. No probs. Even had to turn the gain up to the 2nd notch. Could've gone to third.
Then, I actually recorded vocals for a bands album. No pad necessary with the gain starting out so low.

That 28k button is cool on OH. Kick too. Nice feature in lieu of lo cut and a pad.

One of my favorite mic pres out there.
Love tracking drums with it!
Overdriven/distorted guitars + MA-5 = tone heaven!

A lot of class A/B preamps out there start at 30-35 db of gain, this is where concern arrises. MA5 starts at 15 as I stated above. The new Avedis MD7 is class A/B but no need for a pad as well because it was designed properly. Hats off to Avedis Audio for designing and not just copying like a lot of other companies do.

Getting ready to pull the trigger on an Avedis MA5 this week. Lots of good words here over the years for this preamp. It will be used mainly for lead vocals. We tried out a P1, nice preamp and it was great on our female vocalist but a bit bass heavy on the male. Our Copperhead vocal mic (current favorite) is bit bass heavy to begin with especially with the Tele tube.

Got to try them out in your own setup for sure.

OK so bringing this back up... I have 2 of these and I love them. Out of my small but nice pre collection, these are among my favs. But I am noticing when using on drum close mic's, I have to keep these at like 30-35db gain with the trim almost all the way down... Am I missing out on some fat saturation by not digging into these? I mean, everything sounds good, just wondering if I were to pad down the signal and run it hotter if the sonics would change at all? I'm using a Mojave 201 Fet atm for FOK that also has no pad, so I would need to be able to pass phantom... cheers

If you're backing way off the trim that much it would seem to me you are already driving the pre.

Could experiment with the opposite approach and see what you get by leaving the trim knob wide open and lowering the gain knob.

great idea, will try in a min. Thanks

Love my MA5... it lives on snare drum. Wish I had more of these. MA5 into E27 on snare is a thing of beauty