Built for Ed Carlsen
The latest microphone preamplifier from Rerun comes from a request from Ed Carlsen to create a unit that will respond well while recording piano. Most of the time condenser microphones are used to record piano in the studio. This means that a dedicated preamplifier doesn’t need a lot of gain but does need to be very low noise and not prone to distortion. For this preamp I set a goal of around 45dB of gain and tried to keep things as simple as possible. Due to the restrictions, a transistor-regulated power supply was a must which does add a certain amount of complication; however the benefits of doing so outweigh any hesitations.
The name come from the fact that I used two different “88” tubes– the ECC88 as output driver and an ECC808 as gain stage. Of course the fact the piano has 88 keys is just a happy accident!