Did SD just raise the price of the USBPre2?

[Marshall7]

This is interesting:

"While most of the items we sell ship for free, Sound Devices doesn't allow free shipping for their products."

Who's "we"? 

That quote is taken directly from the product description on Sweetwater's site.

[Todd R]

It reminds me of buying my car new from the dealer and one year later they offered to buy it from me for more than I paid for it.

The MixPre-D is a solid piece of gear, $750 was a nice deal and it is worth the new price but glad I got it when I did. One way to look at it now though is that it's only $50 more than USBPre2, when I bought the gap was larger. MixPre-D met my needs better than USBPre2 so that's the way I went. It seems more folks here went for the USBPre2 but price difference between the two could have been a big factor in that.

Price differential with the MixPre-D was not a factor at all for me getting a USBPre -- I owned the SD MP2 many years ago (pretty damn close to a MixPre analog) and didn't really care for another SD transformer preamp.  I wanted the USBPre since it is supposed to be very close to a 702/722 which I've also owned.

That said, I have a hard time with $850 for a USBPre, since that is the going rate for a Lunatec V3, and that is what I sold my optimod V3 for. At the same price, I might easily have decided just to hold on to the V3. The USBPre does make a nice piece of playback gear as well as recording gear though.

[acidjack]

I like the USBPre for the transparency and the USB powering. It's a versatile unit, compact, and didn't ship with a polarity problem [ducks]. At $650 it was a great deal, but I'm not sure it's a bad deal now.

Also, as was pointed out to me, SD has not changed prices since 2005. 7 years seems like a reasonable time for an increase.

[DigiGal]

I considered a V3 but no headphone amp was a deal breaker. Also looked at USBPre2 but there were suggestions that it's headphone amp wasn't great, it also didn't allow for tape return to use for confidence/recorder playback or handle a matrix if desired. All set with a nice playback DAC so that wasn't a factor and wouldn't want to deal with tearing apart DAW playback setup to use it in the field but I'm sure that works out fine for some people. With the MixPre-D you can power it with external battery, AC Adapter or internal "AA"s the later is useful for redundancy when running external. Not evereryone's needs are the same though so it's nice they offer both.

[page]

At $650 it was a great deal, but I'm not sure it's a bad deal now.

This. It's not as good a deal as it was, but if I was in the market and wanted a super clean amp/adc, it would still make my A-list, but the race is tighter...

[Todd R]

At $650 it was a great deal, but I'm not sure it's a bad deal now.

This. It's not as good a deal as it was, but if I was in the market and wanted a super clean amp/adc, it would still make my A-list, but the race is tighter...

Yes, this is very true.  The USBPre is an excellent piece of gear.  I spent $1500 for my Lunatec V3 new, then spent another $200 to get it opti-modded.  With that in mind, $850 for the USBPre doesn't sound bad at all.

My difficulty even in getting the USBPre, which I debated forever, was that my V3 sold on the used market only with batteries/cables is only worth $800-850 it seems.  Switching over to a USBPre from a V3 and needing to spend money to do it (shipping of the V3, batteries for the UB2) to me seems hard to swallow as I remain a huge fan of the V3, even though I don't own one anymore.

But for a piece of gear that offers as much as the USBPre does, and with the excellent sound it has, $850 is certainly in the realm of reasonable.

[kirk97132]

Todd, gotta be careful.  There is a USBPre AND a USBPre-2 which are completely different animals......

[Todd R]

Todd, gotta be careful.  There is a USBPre AND a USBPre-2 which are completely different animals......

Yep, absolutely -- I'm just being lazy in my typing since I thought it was clear that the USBPre 2 was the topic of conversation.  As people come back to threads and are only reading specific posts, you're right, better to be specific.  The USBPre (original) offers little that I am interested in.

[hammerhorror]

I'm happy that I got my SD 664 before the price increase. Saved $600 bucks!

[rastasean]

While the price difference between the D and usb2 is only $50, you still have to chalk up so much cash to get either one. I think  tapers should take a look at the naiant products, especially next years releases with USB and whatnot, but then again people don't mind putting some cash down on preamps like the grace v2 and v3.

[DigiGal]

This is interesting:

"While most of the items we sell ship for free, Sound Devices doesn't allow free shipping for their products."

Who's "we"? 

That quote is taken directly from the product description on Sweetwater's site.

Interesting that sweetwater still lists free shipping for MixPre-D.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MixPre-D