Pardon me, Aussie Dudes

[Sound Drifter]

Ever hear any JLM Audio preamps? Specifically the TMP8? along side a sebatron vmp-4000e?

[Sam]

Hey Tom....

I have used a lot of Joe's refurbed neve gear in the past - but never his own stuff. I have heard great things though, and I must say his work with re-racking all the gorgous old neve channels and comps I love so dearly was top shelf.

I have used some of the older sebatron stuff that was a different colour, and it was nothing to write home about actually....not sure if the new stuff is a heap better...

haha actually I just saw he has the exact Neve stuff he did for the studio I record in on his site....

http://www.jlmaudio.com/Neve%201064%20Racks%203ss.jpg
http://www.jlmaudio.com/Neve%201064%20Racks%207.jpg
http://www.jlmaudio.com/1272%20Rack%20Front%202%20400.JPG

he did a great job!

[Sound Drifter]

That's for sure. I saw those and some internal pictures and he is very detail orientated.

Everything I have read on the tmp8 is good and heard some samples that sound good as well posted from Curt Foster. Wasn't crazy about the kick and snares sound, but that's my taste. They just didn't have the body and texture I like.

It seems the addition will fill my rack out and be nice and portable for fly-packing. Still thinking.. Wish there was a U.S. dealer where I could demo one on some sessions.

[Sam]

my kick and snare pre's are those 1064's....plenty of body!

[Sound Drifter]

:D I can imagine! What's interesting is the samples here:

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2466&alid=816

The sound very open and natural, like the preamps were not driven at all. Sounds a little lackluster to me and disinteresting.

Where as here:

http://www.jlmaudio.com/TMP8_drums-bass-guitar.mp3
and
http://www.jlmaudio.com/tmp8%20drums.wma

The body I look for is there and is very complimentary to the other instruments.

[Sam]

yeah samples can be deceiving....depends more on if someone can mic up a kit properly rather than the pre's mostly!!! I could make a shitty sounding drum recording with all the neves if I tried hard enough ;)

[Sound Drifter]

I guess that is a good thing about the samples. It shows a little diversity with the preamp having the ability to be more transparent to driving saturation body and texture into a sound.

[Sound Drifter]

Bummed Bummed.....

So I messaged Joe about the preamp and think it will be perfect for the flypack gig I have starting up this weekend and I go to order a TMP-8 and all is good..A little more than I want to spend on a new pre, but think it is worth it. I go to paypal, the total jumps $200 USD :eusa_think: Ok, maybe it is paypal fees so I redo the order to do a bank transfer same thing..:eusa_eh:

UGH.. :willy_nilly: Waiting for a call or email from Joe. Balloon deflating ATM. Hopefully we'll be able to sort out what's going on.

[Sound Drifter]

ahh... The conversion on his site is wrong. Bummer

[Sound Drifter]

Conversion smersion!

Screw it! I bought one anyway. Now watch, One is going to pop up on ebay to nag me!

Now for the new MacBook Pro! :willy_nilly:

[Sam]

noice!!!

[Sound Drifter]

So it has arrived, but I have no space in my rack for it :icon_eek3:

Just started pulling things apart to attach the IO. Here are a few pictures of it until I can run some signal through it.

The bloody thing is so tiny. I feel like I got ripped off! :wink:



The Pretty Box:

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/pretty_box.JPG


Pretty Postage

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/pretty_postage.JPG


Profile:

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/3-4_profile.JPG


The Rear:

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/rear.JPG


Rear Close up:

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/rear_close.JPG


El Top Oh:

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/top.JPG


The top rear:

http://woodcreststudio.com/jlm/top_back.JPG

[Sam]

yummy....let us know how it goes!

[Sound Drifter]

I plugged it in yesterday but only had about an hour to mess with it. I pulled out a couple of guitars and tested out the DIs. Not bad at all. Nice clean and full.

Sounded great right off the bat.

Riding into the limiters produced a usable distortion. OK sounding. Engaging the pads thinned the sound out a little. I then grabbed a tube screamer, one of the really old ones. Set in between the guitar and the preamp. I experimented with driving a real hot signal into the preamp to load it up. The harder I drove into it, the more saturated it got. Very cool. On top of it all, every sound I got was totally usable.

So far so good. I have to get a drummer in here to try it out on the kit.

[Sound Drifter]

Ok for starters, I an not a drummer and I haven't tuned the kit recently :icon_redface:

I set the thing up today on my house kit:

http://woodcreststudio.com/tmp-8/toms.JPG
http://woodcreststudio.com/tmp-8/toms_oh.JPG
http://woodcreststudio.com/tmp-8/k_mic.JPG

Mic selections:

Kick: CAD VSM-1 (-16 pad engaged, folded flannel pillow case inside for resonance control)

Snare: Audix i5

Overhead: Audio Technica 4051

Tom 1: Sm57

Tom 2: SM57

Tom 3: SM57

Tom 4: Sennheiser e835

All into the TMP-8 with gains up to where the limiter lights barely, if at all, turn on.

Tracked through a Lynx Aurora16 at 88.2 into cubase rendered to 16/44.1 via the apogee dither plugin.

Here's the audio file:
http://woodcreststudio.com/tmp-8/TMP-8%20Drums%20Raw.wav

[Sound Drifter]

Oh Boy, This thing is flippin swanky sweet.

In this sample I loosened the snares, adjusted the snare mic and drove the snare mic till the limiters kicked in on the TMP-8.

I then added an electric bass DI into the balanced line input (it's an active bass and sounded better there) and added a few Papoose tracks into the HI-Z inputs. One driven hard into the limiters, and two others not.

The only effect on this is a delay added to the distorted Papoose (7ms) to open the center for the other Papooses.

http://woodcreststudio.com/tmp-8/TMP-8%20Drums%20Hot.wav

[Sam]

Glad you got a good thing there Tom....as I said before, I would find it hard to believe any bit of kit with Joe's name on it would be anything less than very usable, judging from his good rep here....seems like a good bang for buck box then hey?

[Sound Drifter]

Definately a bang for the buck. I gotta say though, it took me a while to pull the trigger because I could not listen to one in person. In using it for a few hours I find it pretty versatle. Depending how you drive the pre, using the pad and all, I've found you can get a variety of different sound out of it. Clean to rich to edgy if you know what I mean. The other thing is cohesiveness. Tracking an entire kit through the same sounding pre, or a song for that matter, instills a glue that I've missed since I sold my console and moved to a modular rack preamp setup.

For the past, gosh 5-7 years I think, it has been this way (using preamps setup in "A" formation for rock and setup "B" for Jazz). Always juggling and thinking what I will use here and there. Really a pain if I'm recording different genre bands in the same time frame. A lot to keep track of. Time will tell if I can dedicate this pre to a given task. The problem now will be if would I even want to since this sucka sounds really good.


Part "Awe Shock" of a new piece and part extremely satisfied in what I've heard so far from the piece. Looking forward to the couple albums and live recording gig I have going on this month. Going to use a lot of it.