Spanspek

They arrived! I've played with them a bit for a couple of weeks.

Yes, two Calrec PQ2647 modules have arrived, nicely racked up by Rob Squire at Pro Harmonic. The other pair is with Mixmasters for evaluation.

Rob has set them up with separate mic and line inputs, switchable with the original LINE switch. From there one can use the EQ section (more on this below). The auxiliary send section does not work at all. I had thought of maybe using a send to get multiple outputs or a final trim control on the output, but it is apparently quite hard. Rob says there are a number of switchable options on the circuit board (accesible via little DIP switches) which have to do with the order of components in the signal path, mute control, and so on. That's OK. I can live with them just being mic pres and EQs.

I played with a ribbon mic and the EQ section straight away. The mic is a Speiden SF12, but one purchased before Royer started manufacturing the design. The mic is beautiful: not a great high end but the best stereo imaging ever (it is a Blumlein configuration).

I've never had a quiet enough mic pre to use it well. All cheaper mic pres, based on SSM2017 chips and the like, are not quiet enough at high gain settings: wind the attached trim pot past the 3 o'clock position and they hiss. The first thing I notice was that the Calrecs don't hiss really at all. Even at 60 dB + 15 dB trim (a whopping 75 dB), they're pretty clean.

The EQ is great. Well, perhaps not great like certain pieces of classic gear, but good. There are low-pass and high-pass filters, each with three selectable frequencies. The high and low shelving bands each have two selectable frequencies and an unspecified amount of boost or cut. It's at least 12 dB and may be 15 dB. The mid band is a bell curve and has the same gain and variable frequencies between 200 Hz and 8 kHz. The EQ certainly sounds very musical and is very useable. The switchable frequencies are very sensible.

I tried it out on a piano: OK, but since the instrument was not great, it was hard to tell. Certainly the pres gave me what I expected given the mics (AKG C414s). Then I used it on a female vocalist with a fair degree of "air" in her voice. A bit of mild compression dulled that a bit so I dialled in a couple of clicks above 5 kHz. The top end shimmered! Since the C414s were the best mics available, that was what we used. They're too neutral sounding to be a good vocal mic, but through these Calrecs I'd reconsider!

Mixmasters engineers tried them as a line-level EQ and a mic pre. They were a bit non-descript but said they were decent. Mind you, those chaps are surrounded by Avalons and vintage Neves and the like. One wouldn't expect a cheaper Calrec channel strip to do the same thing. So, all in all, I'm very pleased.

Mixmasters is sending the second unit back to me. So if you want a couple of decent mic pres and EQs, contact me before they go on ebay or Mixmasters gets an interested buyer.