Br1ck
Senior Member
Let me explain a big reason the better pres like the Grace Felix and SunnAudio, any of them, sound so good, and I don't believe there is a work around for this basic fact. A high quality potentiometer costs a builder north of $20. Let's just take an average of five pots on any $300 or less pre. Do you think a builder is going to spend $100 on the good parts? They have to sell the whole unit between $150-200 to a retailer. This does not take into consideration all the other high quality parts, and they do matter. So the good sounding pres I've heard tend to be simple and direct to consumer, or priced accordingly.
I have A/Bd quite a few Baggs and Fishman pres. I can hear a difference. Is a Baggs PARA DI bad? Not at all, but the RedEye sounded better, and my SunnAudio Studio DI sounds better than a RedEye. A simple, well designed unit with studio quality parts has won out every time in a comparison.
The price of a pot came from Sonny at SunnAudio. The RedEye is somewhat affordable because after trying many transformers, they found one that sounded good for $25, not the normal $100. Is the difference huge? No, but I can hear it. It's like the difference between a $3000 guitar and a $5000 guitar.
I have A/Bd quite a few Baggs and Fishman pres. I can hear a difference. Is a Baggs PARA DI bad? Not at all, but the RedEye sounded better, and my SunnAudio Studio DI sounds better than a RedEye. A simple, well designed unit with studio quality parts has won out every time in a comparison.
The price of a pot came from Sonny at SunnAudio. The RedEye is somewhat affordable because after trying many transformers, they found one that sounded good for $25, not the normal $100. Is the difference huge? No, but I can hear it. It's like the difference between a $3000 guitar and a $5000 guitar.