[Arny Krueger]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message

Arny Krueger wrote:

It's pretty incredible that some people do manage to
build a servicable preamp with all those things;
connectors, box, power supply, switches and other
miscellaneous components for more like $50 than $500.
I'm specifically thinking of the Rolls MP13.

Sure - no transformers (or worse, crummy transformers),

No transformers. In my world that's good news at any price.

wall wart power,

You can easily spend ca. $500 and still have a wall wart.

and most important, mass production.

When you sell for that much less, finding the prerequisite mass market is
far easier.

Remember, the OP was mic preamps whose basic active component is a $5 mic
preamp chip. That leaves out top-of-the-line products in the dust. They are
OT and typically heavily discrete.

Also, the SOTA $5 mic preamp chip of 2010 is a pretty heavy dude!

You can buy a preamp-sized case with no holes in it for
$10-15 and hack it out, but if you make a drawing and
send it to a sheet metal shop for punching (for neat,
round holes exactly where you want them) it'll cost $50
just for that.

If the topic is why you don't want to do it yourself, then I'm into that.
I've home-brewed a ton of audio gear starting when I was about 11. Most were
my designs as well.

I've received the *ultimate* complement for some of my audio projects -
other professionals borrowed some of them and used them for a decade or so
before giving them back! ;-)

I've also personally designed and built more items and more dollar value in
electronics gear than just about anybody you know, but that reaches outside
of audio.

That all said, the first question anybody should answer is "Where do I get a
good commercial product that does that?".

The manufacturer who turns out $50 preamps
by the thousands gets the same case made in China for
about a dollar.

And that is life in the big city. ;-)