Topic: Newbie Pre-Amp Question

[professorhalfbaked]

First of all, before I ask another newbie question, let me proffer a brief word of thanks to everyone for their responses to my mic question!  When you are unfamiliar with all of this stuff, it is pretty hard to get a quick grasp...

Anyway, I just purchased a Marantz PMD620 and am getting a long-term loaner pair of Church Audio microphones FedEx'ed my way as we speak (should have them today/tomorrow).  I see quite a number of jazz shows; although some of it is amplified and loud, some of it can be very quiet (recently saw Michiel Bortslap playing solo piano, for example). 

From what I have gathered here, it seems like it would be in my best interest to get a pre-amp.  I am pretty strongly inclined towards one of the Church pre's, since I figure there won't be any issues with the Church mics.  To be honest, though, I can't really discern the differences between the two models (ST9000 and ST9100).  I am sure there must also be other models which would work well (the Aerco sounds nice but is a bit rich for my blood , but the FEL model I looked at, BMA1, seemed pretty cool).  Long and short of it:  what sort of pre would you folks recommend for this type of recording?

I guess I should mention that since I am borrowing the mics, I will buy a pair of my own over the next six months or a year, so it should also be something that would work well with other mics (like Sennheiser MKE2 or AT943).  Sorry to clutter up the board with these newbie questions, but, hey, everybody has to start somewhere!

[Belexes]

Get the Church ST-9100.  It has adjustable gain up to 20+ dB and will help with the quiet shows.  The ST-9100 will act more like a battery box for the mics at the loud shows w/o the need for gain structure from the pre.

[professorhalfbaked]

Get the Church ST-9100.

I have to admit, I am seriously leaning towards the ST-9100.  Thought maybe somebody might come up with one I didn't know about or hadn't considered, though, hence the post.

Thanks for your response; I'll track you down for a +T when I hit the requisite number of posts!

[pmonk66]

I used the CA-9100 in front of a stock pmd 660 with nice results

[fmaderjr]

What they said.

The ST-9100 is much more versatile the other 2 (even though it provides less gain the the others-a max of 20DB) and it sounds great- I love mine. It can be used in place of a battery box if you wish (set it to the 11:00 position) & provides attenuation as well as gain (unlike the other 2 you mention) if you happen to want to record a very loud show.

I'm sure the ST-9000 sounds great as well (and will provide up to 30 DB of gain), however it apparently is possible to occasionally run into problems using it. According to a previous post by 3-Fan:
   The 9000 knob is not a gain control, it is only an output control.  So even if you have the switch to the +10db   setting an the knob at something other than full, the recorder is still going to see the internal gain structure of the full +10db. For instance, if you wanted say +15db, you could set the preamp to +30 and use the knob to attenuate back to +15db but your internal gain structure would still be +30.  You aren't changing the gain of the
preamp so the input could very easily overload. I learned this the hard way!!

It's possible that FEL could be good for your purposes, since you may not be doing extremely loud stuff, and it does provide up to 50 DB of gain, but the least gain you can set it to is 10 DB (it won't do 0 gain or attenuate), which would certainly be a problem for some applications and means that you could not use it as a substitute for a battery box.

[calvinroots]

9100, can't go wrong...I have dug mine plenty. (stc-11's>9100>R-09)