Tube preamp for vocals?

[Bluefinger]

Hi,

I wonder if anybody can help me ... we are a retro blues band with old drumsets, tweed amps, old guitars, double bass, amplified harp and stuff like that. Everything sounds like it came straight out of the chess records studios ... except for the vocals. Using high powered transistor house PAs just doesn't cut it. It sounds too HIFI. So I wonder if using a tube preamp of some sort between the mic and PA would give me that old scholl compression and warmth. Maybe something I could build myself??? I build guitar and harp amps but have no clue about such things. Any other ideas???

thanks!
BF

[MWJB]

"Everything sounds like it came straight out of the chess records studios ... except for the vocals. Using high powered transistor house PAs just doesn't cut it. It sounds too HIFI."

Sorry, just stumbled on this...If your vocals sound "Hi Fi" through the PA, then congratulations - you are pretty much ball-park for Chess studio sound in that respect! ) There isn't a geat deal of compression or warmth on the Chess cuts as regards the vocals, they pretty much captured the artists as they sounded, often times the vocals are pretty raw/stark & dry. There's quite a bit of "popping" on some early Universal recorded tracks, things went seriously downhill, on & off, for a few months when Chess brough their first in-house studio on-line in '54 (whilst they seemed to flit back & forth from that to Universal), in mid-early '60 the production quality of 2120 S Michigan Ave leapt forward in leaps & bounds & this is when they appear to have been able to start adding reverb right accross the board (previously it seems to have been applied to one track at a time, very occasionally accross the board, post production). Tape delay was more often than not added to everything in the mix when used, this had a warming effect on the vocals, Muddy's Mannish Boy is an example.

If you have a spare Normal channel on a SF/BF Fender, or are happy to compromise on EQ with a tweed, you can plug a SM57/58 into the #2 input, with an in-line impedance transformer...as long as your band isn't super loud, this works surprisingly well. The pick up range of the mic will shut down somewhat so you need to be close on it. It's not the "Chess sound" but may be closer to what you want? Alternatively there are numerous "mic tube preamps" around for £30-£100 which might fatten things up?

[Bluefinger]

well it varies of course but I hear a lot of compression on Little Walter recordings sometimes for example and I like it. It might not only be the compression alone but also that old recording equipment that seemed to color the sound more than modern stuff does. Maybe I'll try singing through my tweed Pro ... why not. We did that on a record 15 years ago. Back then we used a Shure bullet mic into a tweed bassman. That sounded cool for a single song. It's maybe a bit over the top for the whole night but with a modern vocal mic it might work ... thanks!

[MWJB]

I don't hear noticeable compression on the LW stuff generally (vocal-wise, the amps are a different matter, but the compression most likely came from the amps rather than creatively added compression), remember that the majority of recordings up to May '57 were recorded at a cutting edge studio, they had the ability to capture stuff pretty faithfully, it might be old recording equipment compared to today, but it was the latest thing back then...good enough for million selling pop records & radio work. Some late 40's Muddy/Jimmy/LW cuts are really pretty clean sounding. Even when Chess was recording in house at 2120 they had full-time, professional engineers & Bill Puttnam of Universal still seemed to be consulting throughout. The kind of gear they were using to record may have been low on features & channels but the quality would make it inaccessible price-wise for many small to medium studios today, if built new.

I've used mics through Fender amps for PA purposes a few times in small venues, you'll find you get a much cleaner sound through a Shure PA mic through the amp, than with a typical bullet...one jam night a musician complimented on the sound of the "PA"...he was unaware that the PA blew before kick off & was only there because we couldn't be bothered to pull it down, everyone that night had sung through a SF Twin...nobody noticed.

[Bluefinger]

Well, on Blue And Lonesome for example the vocals are clipping, breaking up and compressing quite a bit ... on It's Too Late Brother OTOH it's pretty clean ... it varies. But before we get lost in details about certain recordings ... the point is to make it sound a bit more old fashioned. I'll try my Tweed Pro ...

[dai h.]

older stuff(recordings such old Motown stuff, old movies, etc.) can sound frequency response limited, so I wonder if that would help. On some old transformers I have (or encountered--seen the specs of on the web, etc.), 10kHz on the top end seems to be some old standard spec(newer ones seem to have 20 to 30Hz to 15kHz to 20kHz more often). And depending on how a transformer is loaded, it can accentuate top and bottom end rolloff, so that might help recreate the "warmth". Also, if you use SM57/58 it should help to be aware that the mic input loading can affect the sound (too high can make it thin or poor sounding though more signal voltage is retained the higher the input impedance is) due to the transformer in the mic which will express a peak in the high frequencies the less it's loaded. As far as getting pleasing distortion from overloading the preamp, as far as I gather, modern preamps are made to be clean so trying to achieve that probably won't work, so in that sense maybe a tube preamp or some sort of outboard gear may be more useful.

[Intergalactic Tourister]

Plug an old mic through an old tube PA amp through a speaker on stage. Then mic that speaker through the PA whilst informing the soundperson to layoff the eq boosting and whatnot.

I know what you mean. I knew someone that would run vocals and drums straight to a modern PA. Everything sounded so tinny and fatiguing on the ears. Its seems best, to me, to get the vocal sound on stage through a small amp or something, then run it to a PA.

I tend to avoid modern PAs at much cost. It'll take some experimenting for sure.

[Bluefinger]

We tried some stuff meanwhile but I haven't found a mic/amp combo yet, that I'm satisfied with ... I'll keep searching ... The Tweed Pro seems to work best so far

[Bruce / Mission Amps]

Just curious, but is your modern PA cabinets using piezo driver, horns and or tweeter elements for high mids and top end?

[Intergalactic Tourister]

Just curious, but is your modern PA cabinets using piezo driver, horns and or tweeter elements for high mids and top end?

If your question is directed at my last reply... it was a Peavy PA, with large Peavy speakers that had a 15" woofer and 1 large horn tweeter above it.

I believe Bluefinger is referring to "house PAs" in general when they gigged around. But either way I've never heard a modern PA sound very good, anywhere.

[Bluefinger]

Whatever the club or venue has to offer ... most of the times we have to use the house PA. It would be nice to have something rather compact and uncomplicated in front of the PA that already feeds a nice signal into the PA so I'm not completely at the mercy of the sound engineer.

[greekie]

To make it sound old fashioned, you can do a lot with some voice processing. A simple EQ and a bit of distortion might do the trick as well as some reverb.

Might save you the hassle of hauling tube gear around.

YM2C

[ThermionicScott]

I have absolutely no experience in this area , but it seems like a two-stage tube preamp could add the coloration you want without a lot of weight. A stage of gain with a steep loadline to add even harmonics, a two-knob tone control to limit the bandwidth (this could also be done via grid-stopper and coupling cap values), and a cathode follower on the back end to tailor the output impedance.

- Scott

[Gtr_tech]

Since you're dealing with house PAs, yer gonna be limited on what you can do, and what the soundguy is gonna put up with. Prob'ly the easiest thing would be to build a (x) channel transformer input tube preamp and voice it to sound the way you want. You may encounter the soundguy who's gonna say "you ain't hookin' that shit to my board", so I really dunno what to say here.

But, if it were your own PA you would have the option of driving the tops with tube amps. Leave the bass bins SS pwr'd, cross over the tops around where the bass bins leave off and you shouldn't need more than 100w for smaller rooms. Tube amps go a long way to smoothing out the mid squawk of compression horn drivers and generally make everything sound "nicer". Thats why the hi-fi guys will still use tube powered systems.....the horns are super efficient and don't require a ton of power to get up to resonably high SPL's.

[doctor]

Since you're dealing with house PAs, yer gonna be limited on what you can do, and what the soundguy is gonna put up with. Prob'ly the easiest thing would be to build a (x) channel transformer input tube preamp and voice it to sound the way you want. You may encounter the soundguy who's gonna say "you ain't hookin' that shit to my board", so I really dunno what to say here.

But, if it were your own PA you would have the option of driving the tops with tube amps. Leave the bass bins SS pwr'd, cross over the tops around where the bass bins leave off and you shouldn't need more than 100w for smaller rooms. Tube amps go a long way to smoothing out the mid squawk of compression horn drivers and generally make everything sound "nicer". Thats why the hi-fi guys will still use tube powered systems.....the horns are super efficient and don't require a ton of power to get up to resonably high SPL's.

In my opinion Bluefinger's question is more related to the sound engineering,
so I recommend referring the matter to the appropriate forums:

Forum - Main Forums : Live Sound & Performance
Forum - Main Forums : Recording & Production
Recording Forum
LAB: The Classic Live Audio Board

Here you will be able get most qualified answer.