Meris 440 - 500 Series Mic Preamp
- Signal Chain
- Meris 440 - 500 Series Mic Preamp
A forward, clear mic preamp with front panel insert for integrating guitar pedals.
$549.00
It's easy to see the other DSP based modules in Meris' product lineup and overlook the mic preamp. Don't do that. This mic pre is every bit as impressive as their Mercury reverb and Ottobit bit crusher/ring mod. This preamp is not meant to be a clone of anything else you've used before, but they do seem to have created a mid-forward, clear preamp that is reminiscent of the API sound. It's incredible for guitars, but would still be an excellent candidate for most any task. It's not so colored that it would paint you into a corner in your mix.
As if it weren't enough to just design a preamp that sounds incredible, Meris also decided to pack it with some features that are incredibly handy. Most notable is the instrument level insert loop on the front panel. Use this insert to patch guitar pedals into the signal path of your microphone, or to split a signal out to an amp. You can run a DIed instrument back into the line input, and there's a low-cut filter and an incredibly handy gentle high shelf to open the top on your darker ribbon mics.
This is an incredible preamp, and you'd be doing yourself a HUGE favor by adding a pair of these to your studio.
Los Angeles, CA – January 22, 2014 – Meris today unveiled it’s model 440 Microphone Preamplifier for the 500 Series modular format. Quickly becoming an industry mainstay, 500 series lunchbox racks are now an integral part of project and pro studios. The 440 Mic Preamp brings a premium quality, best in class solution for recording electric and acoustic guitar to 500 series. Featuring a premium quality all analog signal path and legendary Cinemag transformers, the 440 Mic Preamp brings warmth and classic American tone to today's recording environments. And, with innovative features like a pedal level post effects loop and specially designed filters aimed at guitar recording, the 440 is a complete solution for tracking guitar.
Meris is an exciting new 500-series manufacturer that's bringing a lot of previous DSP experience with them. From the minds that brought you Strymon pedals and Line 6 pedal and amp modeling, Meris is bringing a dramatically different type of product to the familiar world of 500 series. Their reverb (Mercury7) and bit crusher (Ottobit) are tailor-made for engineers and musicians looking for professional-grade tools to create brand new sounds for the studio. The Mercury7 in particular is a reverb really meant for tweaking. It's not a "set and forget," preset-based box, but one that you won't take your hands off once you start twisting knobs. Even the 440 preamp comes with a dramatically different approach. It's not only a fast, forward, and great-sounding mic preamp, but a gateway between the world of pro audio and the world of guitar pedals. It's got an instrument level insert available to you on the front panel, and there is no end to the experimentation that will follow! The Meris design team includes Terry Burton, who previously founded Strymon, Angelo Mazzocco, Line6’s top choice DSP Engineer to the stars (Van Halen, the Edge, Dweezil Zappa, etc.), and Creative Director Jinna Kim, hailing from L.A.’s leading design studios, and who previously created the brand identity for Strymon.