The camera on my phone has started crapping out on me, so I won't be able to add a picture of Silver Bullet
#0003 in its new home until later... But I do want to take a few minutes to say that I'm happy as a pig in **** using this guy on the mix bus.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
12tone
➡️
In short whatever source material becomes more euphonic, with the caveat that it actually made poor recordings and mixes sound absolutely worse, whereas known good recordings and mixes ends up sounding gloriously better.
+1
My first impression of the SB, just running some familiar stuff through the box, was a) that I really liked the EQ and b) that the gain staging choices available make for a lot of possibilities for a sonic signature.
When I finally had time to use it at length, I made up a little game which turned out to be surprisingly enlightening. To wit: I took my two favorite consumer hifi amplifiers into the studio and attempted to get the Silver Bullet to sound like each of them.
The surprising thing I learned is that this Tone Amp was a lot easier for me to use once I stopped caring what "A" and "N" stand for and started thinking of them as tone components.
I think I have pretty decent ears, and I am certainly familiar with the prototypical API and Neve "flavors." I know I tend to prefer the Neve low end and mids on most things. The SB's A and N circuits definitely sound like what they're based on, but once I stopped thinking about that and just started using my ears, I had a lot more fun.
And I was surprised at how many variations you can get out of these two circuits, both together and separately.
I have this old hifi from 1958 that I love. I bought it from the original owner, who took good care of it. I've recapped it and replaced the power tubes. It's about 10 watts per channel, EL34-based class AB. In other words it's a typical low wattage late 50s/early 60s home stereo. The sort of amp that makes you understand why Klipshorns were invented...
I was not surprised to discover that the N mojo circuit by itself gets damned close to the sound of that little guy, but I was pretty surprised to find that tucking a tiny bit of A under that N using the A->N setting almost NAILED it.
(Also, a note to Brad: The EQ, when set to "bass" and "pres" acts and sounds almost
exactly like the bass and treble controls on that amp! Except on the SB they can also cut!)
I was not surprised that my Yamaha CR-1020 is a little more A than N, but I WAS a little surprised to find that a fairly saturated A gets closest... That Yamaha is a very "clean" sounding amp to my ear, so I wasn't expecting to turn the gain up as high as I ended up going with it to find the sound.
I was also surprised at how useful "Air" is on this EQ for this kind of "copy that amp's sound" exercise. I normally think of an "air band" as "opening up" a track or a mix, but in this application I was thinking of it more as "extend the top end to simulate the way this amp works best with such-and-such a tweeter."
Anyhow... Here's my real point:
The SB sounds great, no doubt. It does the "Neve thing" and the "API thing" very well. But in my mind what makes the SB
important is the way it lets you mess with everything in between. It's easy to think of it in terms of "A or N," but with those two circuits and the EQ, there are an INSANE number of distinct variations.
I'd wager you could get the SB to sound like a number of other preamps by combining the two flavors it has. In fact, while I write this I am idly trying to get the N->A mode to sound like a moderately-driven Jensen twin servo design preamp (A/Bing between the SB and a pair of Seventh Circle J99s). I think I will be able to get pretty close...
I encourage all SB owners to try to make the SB sound like their favorite amp! It was more educational than I expected it to be, both because it revealed how versatile the SB can be AND because it made me think twice about how well I "know" the sound of my favorite amps and these well-respected preamp "flavors."