I'm curious what sound you consider the v3 to have. I find it to be pretty transparent. Interesting.
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I find it *almost* brittle sounding, especially in the high-end
I'm not gonna go so far as to call it brittle, because I think that brittle is a disparaging term. But your right, their is a very smooth peak in the very very high end that I pick up on whenever I hear a V3 source(granted, some mics will react to it more than others), I also notice an almost slight compression and smoothness to certain lower end warm tones. Compression is a bad term to use for what I'm talking about, but it's almost a tube-like warmth. Hard to describe...... You gotta understand, I really like what a V3 does in combo with a good mic. Great, great preamp.
And as far as the discussion about the Transparent mod. I find the stock UA-5 to already be very transparent(I think I mentioned it in my last post), I have noticed that it's less noisy with any of the mods(but I think the chip replacement and better parts would definitely do that). I just don't know if it's worth it, considering how much it would cost with all the mods. I'd probably invest in something else.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not knocking the UA-5 or the T-mod, I just thought that in terms of what I'm looking for vs. price, I'm happy, so I won't mod. I've heard recordings through about a million sources, and with the stock Ua-5(Digi-modded) and a decent set of mics, I'm finally hearing things the way that I remember them, which is way more valuable to me than if I get a good a good sounding tape from a shitty sounding room. I guess it depends on what you're going for. I'm a soundman, so alot of times I use my tapes as a reference to how I did working the boards that night. Something that colors won't give me true representation of what I did.
I hope this answers your questions