The Stunning Gruning
This preamp rack is badass! I have been looking for a vintage preamp that could answer the call of obtaining a big and open presence on my vocals. While my research pointed to a few options, the one that kept popping up over and over again was old RCA BA pres that existed in full recording consoles made by RCA in the 1960s.
Since some of the other options that came to my attention were quite rare (or insanely expensive or both), I landed on the RCA's since they seemed to be on the more uncommon side of rare, as opposed to "hen's teeth" rare. I acquired two modules of the 72-A variety, and sent them over to Tom Gruning of Gruning Audioworks in New York to have them refurbished, recapped, and racked up.
The unit came out beautifully, and is certainly the sexiest unit currently in my rack. I got all the bells and whistles with no holds barred - variable source impedance, polarity switches, pads, +6db gain boost, added phantom power, and illuminated VU meters. Even the spectra blue glimmering faceplate was an upgrade.
Surprisingly, the hardest part to find for this build was completely aesthetic: the vintage "RCA meatball" steel badge. This was also likely pulled off a vintage 1960's console (or other similar RCA recording equipment form that time period). While you can typically find these old metal badges fairly easily, finding the 1.5 in badges is more difficult, especially ones in good condition - but I am glad we waited, because Tom was right about the 1.5 inch meatballs looking way better than 2 inch ones (as you can probably tell from he photos - perfectly sized for this rack).
I will have some sound samples recorded on this unit soon, but it will have to wait since the unit was unfortunately damaged in shipping, and will require me to send it back to Gruning. This is no fault of the builder, since his work and packaging were top-notch - as you will see in the following unboxing/racking video below.
Expect a part 2 for this upon the item returning after repair.
In making the best of the situation -
As this unit was almost done being built, I actually found one of the "hen's teeth"-rare units I had been looking for! A dual channel Sphere M1200B preamp, and it was actually for sale at a fair price! Moreover, it also happened to be racked by the same guy as this unit - Tom Gruning! So fortunately for me (kind of), I will be able to ship this RCA pre back the same day that the Sphere unit arrives, as to avoid suffering any downtime in recording (channel two of the RCA unit is still semi-functional until then). Fingers crossed on UPS shipping moving forward - I very much hope to do a shootout between these two preamps in fully functioning order. Check the video -
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