ART Dual MP

If you have to ask...put the guitar down and step away from the mixing board.

additionally....cheap, and small....so it gets some kudos for staying out of the way and being relatively easy to get at controls.

Another generic tin can pre in a long line of "Toob" gear.

It sounds just fine when not driven, crisp and warm...and heavily colored.

....it sounds like trash when driven.
like running a mic through a 30watt solid state Crate practice amp.

ofcourse SOMETIMES I want trash, so i've got a couple of these.

it's wonderful for imitating Rob Zombie-NIN-Marilyn Manson-Tool-SnakeRiverConspiricy-Minisry-Skinny Puppy-Butthole Surfers
....aggressive gain-y vocals

....a must have for metal / nue-metal bands....essential staple

...kind of cool for blues harmonica players, ofcourse a Crate Peavy or Gorrilla Practice amp will give you the same tone....yippie ding.

hated in the eyes of an truly educated celtic folk player.

LOATHSOME To the ear of a classical enthusiast or any singer who's not totally deaf.

....really....only Marilyn Manson & Billy Corgan have ANY business singing through one of these...UNLESS YOU WANT TO IMITATE that.
..it IS the sound of Manson's WHOLE thing...I'm fairly sure he sings through these ALL the time....or through a Gorilla practice amp...same difference.

PERFECT frill for remote recording engineer.....lightweight and not bad at low level room capture......pretty good on secondary ribbons....to Capture ROOM reverb...but NOT the core signal.

....total trash in the eyes of a true audiophiliac.

Prone to outside interference and picks up ALL kinds of hums and hisses in the room.....when I use it, ALL the lights and PC's in the place ....even the beer fridge in the lounge space, ALL need to be OFF to avoid interference hums and hisses.

hell...my CELL phone and Blackberry sync-ing up show up on tape as a broken squarewave in the track...NASTY SOUNDS ensue..

ofcourse, if you WANT interference...noise...weird sound effects and hums...ala all that background bs Radiohead uses....well this is your noise box.

why would I call them....?

dude...these are the people responsible for the ART SGX-2000.

cheapie bells and whistles manufacturer of consumer schlock...yeah they know what their doing.

Its' a GREAT pair of tin cans and string
...if what you WANT is a crappy grit signal to play with in mix
or a LOT of color added to a high output mic.

MOST people say, its great on Drums.....the ONE instrument that needs a compressor the MOST and signal boost the least....think about it.

Half the time you'd be better just using a good compressor for the 30db you need.....this box is NOT essential to that application....an Onyx kicks this pre's BUTT in the area of cheap simple drum tracking.

Anyone who's been anywhere near a guitar amp will know how to use the ART dual mp. (No drummer jokes in this review...oops too late). The indicater LED's will only fox an absolute moron.

This preamp blossemed and bloomed for the first time recently when I bought a studio condencer mic. With the mic's high output and low noise any short-comings I had blamed on the mp before simply disappeared. In short the mp sounds great! I'm hesitant to enter the relms of esoteric audiophile ramblings, but it did make me spend far too much time just strumming my guitar and singing through my set-up just so I could listen back to the magic that had been created, and yes I'm a crap singer and a mediocre guitarist. By-the-way, at work where we do lots of voice-overs, we have a neumann tlm going into a telefunken and I like my sound more. Thats with a 100 euro t-bone mic.

I dropped it. It still works.

What for?

I record all sorts of music styles and spoken word. Every sound I want I can get from my gear. Don't listen to the sound-snobs, they are only trying to vilify stuff that costs a fraction of what they paid but is virtualy as good. I'm talking real diminishing returns here, a machine like this is like 99% of a telefunken or drawmer for 10% of the price. It can be as transperant or as "inyerface" as you like. Oh just buy it!

easy to use. How hard can it be? its a preamp. Everythings on the front. The meetering is minimal but effective enough. To keep it at its cleanest just keep the first gain as low as poss. then crack the output level until its right. Why did the bloke before give it 1 out of 10? he must be a bit simple.

its an OK sound. i agree its a bit too warm sometimes, and a bit too fuzzy when driven hard. For example I don't favour it for recording vox or getting clean clear dynamic sounds. I've found its great on snare and kick with just a SM57 if driven hard. Its a thick sound, but lacking a little in attack and crispness. Its also good at making keyboards less poxy. My favourite use is running from my guitar multifx recording output into the hi-z inputs and then to a drawmer LX-20 and squishing it heaps. it really helps the direct recording sound to be more 'guitar' and less 'direct' sort of sound.

yeah. I've had it a few years, no problems.

never tried.

This thing is a no brainer to use. 2 channels of pre-amp. On each, there is an input knob, an output knob, and 3 buttons!!! 20db boost, phantom power, and phase reverse. Push the button(s) you would like to activate.
It has 1/4 inch and XLR input jacks, and XLR outs.
Convenient, and simple.
It has these lights to signal warmth and clipping and stuff. They light up well. They do their thing. But I'm listening. They are not VUs per se. There are only 4 of them.

When I first put it in my rack, I put it directly below my power conditioner. This was stupid. Don't do that!!! Noisy.
Now it's been moved and is fine.
Most recently I ran a KSM27, and an SM58 through pre-compresion to record live vocal/guitar. No problems. Warm, and full, maybe too warm with too much input gain. But does what it does, and for the money, it does it pretty well. I've run 57s, 58s, KSM27s, MD-421s....a number of mics through it.
That being said I do not particularlly like the way my guitars sound through it's Highz 1/4 input, but that's why I have mics and amps.

So far so good. I bought it as a demo from Mars. It looks like they dropped it. It works just fine.

They were great. I e-mailed my problem, they gave me an 800 number to get a return shippment authorization within a day.
I found it was operator error, let them know, and they responded apropriately.

This thing works fine, and does it well for the price. I have no complaints. Would I buy another one? Probably, but only as a replacement. I have 2 channels of this pre-amp now. I would go for a different sounding pre-amp for my next one.

Not easy you have to full around with the nob too much just to get rid of the noise. The only purpose it's giving me is access to use my
condenser mic for XLR in put and out put...

I don't hear that much difference on other instruments besides the bass guitar but they said it makes it nice and warm...For the price i paid $400 canadian is a lot for this purpose........

it looks tough to me.

The truth is i regret buying this gear i felt like i got ripped off
but i would buy the dbx version of this.... If i need a direct box for bass i would have bought something for that purpose and i would not have spent $400 canadian.......plus tax.