Welcome to Vintage Music Tech.!

This is a place where we'll be talking about vintage music gear and it's place in the vast music making landscape of today.

Tube gear, reel to reel tape recorders, microphones, preamplifiers- these important bits of gear and how to get the most from them.

In general I shoot demonstration videos, but I'm always happy to talk gear with any interested party!

So here is one to kick it off!


This video is of a microphone preamp that I modified from an old tube reel to reel machine (Roberts 720 or 990, as I recall).

 Also featured in the video is a popular microphone and line mixer- the Mackie 802VLZ3.

This video gives just a quick example of the differences between tube mic preamps, and solid state preamps.  I would say they are approximately equally priced "for their time."

The tube preamp is 100 percent all tube path, including the recctifier tube/ power supply.
Tubes are 12AX7, EF86, and 6x4 (rectifier).

To be honest, I'm not sure about the opamp/chips that the Mackie uses, but it performs well and it has mixer features that the tube preamp doesn't have.

I suggest listening a few times over speakers as well as in headphones to really catch the subtle (and not so subtle) sonic differences of each instance.

The microphone is a Shure SM57.

Enjoy!