Shelford Dual Mic Pre (5025)

From Rupert Neve Designs:

Over fifty years in the making, the Shelford mic preamp is the definitive evolution of the original technologies in Rupert’s classic console modules. The Shelford Dual Mic Pre contains two of these preamps in a single rack space.

Like Rupert’s designs from his time in Little Shelford, the Shelford Dual Mic Pre uses a custom step-up transformer on the microphone input that provides the first 15 dB of gain. This specially-designed transformer, along with its careful integration with the surrounding class-A circuitry, is critical to the amplifier’s bold, mid-focused magic that can be heard on thousands of classic recordings.

While the majority of the harmonic richness found in Rupert’s designs is a product of the output transformer and surrounding class-A amplifiers, this step-up input transformer also imparts a unique musical enhancement of its own. The technical reasons for this are primarily a result of the reactive impedance characteristic of the input transformer and how that interacts with the connected microphone, resulting in subtle, non-linear harmonic enhancement of the lows and an unmistakable sweetness in the high frequencies.