Aphex 107 Vintage TubeEssence Stereo Pre-Amp $140

I have (2) of these for sale; (4) channels of sweet tube sound. Use them to fatten up kick, bass or warm up stale vocals. They are in good shape having lived in my rack. One of the pre-amps (the one shown here) left rack ear is slightly bent – but is does not affect the unit’s performance.

Housed in a surprisingly light 1U case, the Model 107 comprises two independent mic channels, each with independently-switchable 48V phantom power, Phase invert, 80Hz Low Cut (12dB/octave), 20dB pad and Gain control. All the switches have status LEDs and there are two further LEDs — green for signal OK and red for Overload.

The mic inputs are conventional XLRs, thoughtfully mounted on the front panel for convenience, but the outputs (which are ‘quasi-balanced’, presumably a ground-compensated, pseudo balancing circuit) are on stereo jacks, which may displease the professional fraternity. However, for the rest of us, jacks provide a universal, cheap and generally reliable means of connection, and the Aphex output stage allows an unbalanced jack to be inserted with no loss of signal level (unbalancing some balanced outputs incurs a 6dB signal loss). Slide switches are used to select either -10dBV or +4dBu operating levels, further evidence that the unit is aimed at both pros and project studio owners, and additional jacks are provided so that a remote switch, such as a footswitch, can be used to mute the channel.

Constructionally, the vulnerable gain mic stage is built in close proximity to the input socket which minimises the chance of electronic ‘pollution’, and the overall standard of construction is up to Aphex’s usual high standard with no skimping on component quality. By way of facilities, I thought that a separate line input jack would have been useful for ‘tubulizing’ mixes, submixes and so on, but as it is, if you want to process line-level signals, you really need to go via a DI box.

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