Rascal Audio. Analogue TONE for the digital environment.
Rascal Audio’s TWO-R, TWO-V, and ONE-V microphone amplifiers are built to satisfy the most discerning professionals who crave vintage TONE but require more than a one-trick pony. By rethinking the gain structure of the most revered vintage microphone amplifiers in history, Rascal Audio designer, Joel Cameron has created a circuit whose intuitive feature set provides an unprecedented degree of control over a signal’s TONE without the need for additional hardware. The result is a true desert island microphone amplifier for TONE lovers, which couples dynamically responsive, class-A gain blocks with a deceptively simple yet tremendously powerful gain structure to produce what is simply the most inspiring and tonally flexible, discrete, transformer-balanced microphone amplifier on the market. And above all, it’s musical! Whether producing fluid, articulate gain for your guitar amps, classic British, class-A bulk for your drums, or pure, buttery silk for your lead vocals, Rascal Audio microphone amplifiers deliver gorgeous, engaging, opulent TONE every time.
In addition to its unique gain structure this circuit also provides +48 volt phantom power, input impedance selection, polarity inversion and an extremely musical, broadly applicable hi-pass filter per channel. The Two-R rack unit further adds a true hi-impedance (2 MΩ ) 1/4” instrument input per channel.
The clinical nature of digital recording media has long demonstrated that it isn’t accuracy that makes coveted vintage designs worth the often-exorbitant price of admission, but rather the colorful and desirable character that these imperfect circuits impart on our music – the engaging distortion of reality such circuits create when we pass audio through them. The bandwidth and unique phase characteristics of large, unwieldy transformers, the relative slowness of adolescent transistor technology, the loading that results from a more classical view of impedance matching within circuits and combined signal paths, all are elements (considered flaws by modern design convention) that combine to produce the glorious TONE that make ears perk up and bodies relax – visceral, organic TONE that engages the very soul of the listener. As audio professionals this is the goal. This is what we crave.
Rating: 4.8
919-682-5552