Ken Winokur wrote:

Your Bellari, for example, has a godawful IC in its
output circuit, the source of much of the harshness, and a cruddy
transformer to boot. Clean those things up and you'll have the nucleus of a
good preamp.

Do you actually recommend this, as opposed to simply buying a better
one (RNP for instance)? If you do recommend it, who would you
recommend to do the work?

Use the Bellari as a color pre when you want some distortion, like blues
harp, some nasty guitar tracks, a raunchy snare, etc. When you want
cleaner from it use a low sensitivity mic like the Beyer M160 which will
not overload the lousy input transformer which has too many turns for
its own good. Or put a pad on other mics before they hit the pre.

--
ha