"soundhaspriority" wrote in message
...

That is true only if accuracy is the criteria. Personally, I have always
sensed that tube equipment adds something to the signal that may or may
not
be desirable.

Some tube equipment adds something. Other tube equipment, which I would
class as "the good stuff", doesn't. What it does is avoid adding the icy
chill of bad solid-state gear.

When equipment adds, there can be no universal agreement on
what's good or bad.

Here are two problems:
1. I have a female vocalist, who has a rather smooth voice, and I want to
add some top end sheen, so she sounds more like the exhibits at the NY
Hifi
Show of SET amplifiers playing through exotic speakers.

Well, if you must...try something like a Soundelux U195 microphone; run it
through the Great River NV preamp that Mike R. suggested. EQ as necessary,
preferably with the new Great River NV-series EQ. Use the "Air" band.

2. I have a male vocalist who needs some additional midrange body.

Electro-Voice RE20.

Suggestions for either/both of these are requested. Something simple,
something cheap, that will give 55% of the benefit of a $10K tube preamp
that can't be all that accurate.

There ain't no 10k tube preamps to my knowledge; the priciest tube pre out
there is about 3k for two channels, I think. And it has a reputation for
being quite accurate.

You want something cheap that does what the expensive gear does. Most of the
time, it doesn't exist. Once in a while, you find something cheap that works
in a particular situation, like the time I discovered my buddy Paul Ovaitt's
mandolin sounds better on an Oktava MC012 microphone than on a Neumann
KM-84. I wouldn't expect that to apply to the next mandolin down the pike,
and it didn't.

You want a long-term solution, not super cheap but not astronomical either,
get yourself three microphones (get the first two on ebay:

Electro-Voice RE20

Beyer M260

Microtech Gefell M930

With those three, I suspect you can handle 95% of the vocalists in the
world. For the moment, use the preamp you have; when your bank account
recovers, get a Peavey VMP2 preamp and then a Great River. You'll be pretty
much set for life.

Peace,
Paul