ART Pro Channel

read the manual.
The PRO has alot of features and you have to get used to the EQ switching possibilities.
it??s not the easiest Preamp but when you use it with patience you will love it.


i would give a ten cause i have no probs but i know for some people easy means plug and play.

After a big frustration from an other Pre i decided to buy the ART PC
although many Pro Sellers told me it??s not as good as the one they sold me.
This "better" Preamp was a big disappointment.i have tried to convince myself that is is a goodsounding Pre i just dont know how to handle it and all the "professionals" must know better.
But i couldnt. i have send the Threeq back and purchased the ART PC.
i am glad i did.
The Art immediatly improved my recordings.
The compressor is musical and smooth.
for me the Eq is very useful too.
The Tube sound is sweet.
It??s good for all electric and acoustic instruments and vocals.
especially bassguitar sounds great wow yes thats what i??ve needed.
i dont record drums so i cant say something about that.
ill give a eight cause i like it very much.

dont know yet.

dont know yet.

i play the bass for 25 years now.
gigging 1-3 days a week with my cover band.

compose and record my songs at home.
play the guitars, basses and some Vocals and record others.
my musical roots are in the 70ies - Funk-soul-Hard Rock-Prog rock-Crossover.

but i like every kind of good music from jazz to world music, latin, new metal.

i would buy it again.it improved my recordings.
there are sure better pres in the world but for my needs and for that price i could not do better.

im no recording pro and i dont care about slew rates and special parts with famous names.
when i hear it and like it its good.
pluged in played the bass ... made my day.

The Pro Channel definitely is not a plug in and play Studio Tool. Sure it'll work that way but with some experimenting and tweaking you can achieve sounds that Mic Pre's 4 times the cost would struggle to get.

Initial sound quality sucked. I replaced the tubes with Vintage Telefunkens for vocals and Bugle Boys for Bass guitar and the Pro Channel came alive. Simply awesome. Get rid of the junk EH tubes, and you have a "REAL" recording tool.

Never had a problem.

I contacted the company with questions and they where very helpful.

I record Rock and Country, The Pro Channel is used on all of the Bass tracks that are recorded and on many of the vocals. It is a great tool with tons of gain lots of flexibility for a very small price tag. As mentioned earlier, ditch the tubes it is shipped with and get some tubes with warmth and tone and it shines. Extremely clean for a processor in this price range.
I use this a Pre amp into a Presonus Firepod directly to a Sony Recording/media computer with Cubase SX3 software. Near field monitors are Alesis M1 Active MK2.
Other compressors and EQ's:
Yamaha GC2020C Compressor, Summit Audio 2BA-221 Compressor, Yamaha SPX900 processor and Voxengo, UAD, and many other plugin's. Lot's of other Studio tools.

For someone on a budget it's a great starting piece of equipment.

I had no problems using mine it is very easy but I also have used several other compressors.

I use this as a pre for some tracks into my DAW. This rules for bass guitar no amp needed just go unbalanced 1/4 inch in sounds great. This is very clean and noise free. Also miked Marshall 4/12's and was quite good. Clients loved it. Very cost effective.
BTW why would someone buy this as a guitar distortion unit??? Beats me... Mike your amp if you have one!
I haven't used it for vocals tho because I have other pre's but would prolly be respectable. The compressor is awesome. At lower levels you actually can't tell it is even on ;)
Only giving it a 9 because I am sure a few thousand dollars would outshine this unit.

Well I have had mine 5 years and no problems...
Yeah I would take it on the road seems pretty sturdy as far as tubes go. But I would keep it in a road case.

Never called

I personally play metal guitar and vocals. I am 40 and have been playing guitar sice 4th grade lol! But I record and master all styles. I have plenty of gear but this item stands out as a really useful one. I would get another if someone ripped it. It just has a tonal warm quality that ya could prolly get from some vintage 2k piece. But I don't have the 2k so I am happy with it. Way good for the money!! However for classical music such as violins etc I would recommend a solid state pre..

Very easy to use and get a good sound out of. There are many options to shape your sound. The manual is very well written and helpful.

I use this as a mic pre/compressor for both tracking and live vocal work. I got tired of relying on sound guys to make the vocals sound good. I run various mics through it - but for live work I rely on my trusty beta 57 - I don't know much about Art, I know they made some cheesy looking stuff in the 90's with some dumb paint work on it, but i have no other preconcieved notions of them. I got this because I liked the specs. On paper it looked like just what I needed. It cost over 300 bucks, which is a lot of money for, so when I bought it I was taking somewhat of a chance on it.

Well, I can honestly say that I am not disappointed in the least. This box can really sweeten up the vocals with a nice tube warmth. There is a ton of gain on this thing to drive just about anything. You have to be careful when feeding into a PA because it could feedback - you just have to make sure you are not preamping the preamp and fiddle with the eq and feedback is gone.

I like the way that it is laid out - very intuitive. The compressor is very musical too. I used to own a focusrite tonemaster or whatever it's called, and I used to use that, but it just didn't have that much warmth to it. The compressor was nice but it really didn't do much for me.

The pro channel on the other hand really makes things sound 'bigger' - and with the EQ you can dial in a bunch of different sounds - like using the filter for a telephone effect.

The unit itself seems to be really well-made- I love the big VU meters and the black is nice. I kind of wish there was an xlr on the front, but I can live with that.

overall, the sounds quality is excellent in my opinion. I would be curious to see how it sounds with different tubes....

Seems very reliable so far. I've only had it for a week. but it feels solid - not flimsy - so far so good

have no idea

I would totally buy this again. It's a great sounding tool for recording and performing vocals. I have a lexicon mpx110 as an insert effect and I add just a tad of some reverb to the vocals and it's a real quality sounding rig. I've spent so much time/money/energy on dialing in my guitar sound and nothing on vocals. I keep getting screwed by sound guys who don't know what the hell they are doing. No more - it's time to take control of the vocals - I now bring my own mic and my own pre/comp/eq and the pro channel fits the bill really nicely - a very impressive box overall.

This post is to clarify some issues regarding the Pro-Channel's use with electric guitar that were written below. The Pro-Channel can work quite well with guitar. It can do anything from clean, to bluesy, to crunchy, to overdriven, to a respectable amount of distortion. This isn't to say that you can cover all the tone possibilities that come from a full-blown modern amplifier such as a Mesa Boogie. If your into a more agressive and modern metal kind of sound, the Pro-Channel just won't cut it, yet it could work quite beautifully for a lot of the "Classic Rock" tunes. It certainly blows my Behringer V-amp out of the water when it comes to the more lightly overdriven bluesy tones. <br>

It is possible get some very nice tone out of this unit, especially in conjunction with a wah pedal to shape the tone. As a plus, the compressor section can be very useful for guitar work as well for extra sustain, and also for inducing feedback at the tail end of those long sustained chords. How many guitar amps do you know of that even have a compressor at all? <br>

The important thing to keep in mind when using the Pro-Channel for guitar overdrive/distortion is you will need a separate amp and woofer, and be sure to bypass the horn. If the horn is in the signal path, then of course it will sound like crap with overdrive and distortion because of all the harsh high end noise. Some PA type speakers have an extra jack allowing you to plug into just the woofer. Of course you could use a regular guitar amp instead. <br>

Though it is not a tube guitar amp, and thus lacks power tubes (which in a guitar amp are also involved in shaping the sound and dynamics) it can be used as such in conjuction with some sort of beefy amplification system in which the horns can be bypassed. I run it through an audio amplifier into the 12" woofers of a Carvin PA speaker, and it works for me. I dought using the Pro-Channel for overdriven/distored guitar would work well with a woofer much smaller than a 10". <br>

Because of the horn issue, the Pro-Channel unfortunately should not be run directly into a mixing board if your in a band. You definitely need some way to agressively filter out all the extra high end crap, but the same can be said for any traditional analog overdrive/distortion box. I suppose you could use speaker emulator to solve this problem, but by that time it probably make more sense to get a regular guitar tube-amp setup instead. <br>

All-in-all, the Pro-Channel is a viable alternative to a guitar amp for anything from respectably clean to moderately distorted "Classic Rock" style tones. Just remember you'll still need a separate amplification system along with a big woofer.

Logical layout and the LED ladder monitors for tube character on the preamp and compression section are very helpful (as well as very necessary). The old fashioned needle is cool, but the LED ladders give more relevant and precise information, so in practice I don't even really look at the needle at all. Actually, the manner in which the needle moves depends a lot on the gain staging throughout the unit. When I first began to use my Pro-Channel, I thought the needle meter was broken because the needle wasn't moving due to the way I had the gain and volume knobs set. The most difficult thing with the unit is setting all the knobs that deal with gain and volume. Altogether there are 4 such knobs as well as a +20 dB pad, and this is not counting the knobs for band levels in the EQ section. Setting the pre-amp section is critical to getting the most out of this unit, and it can be tricky to get it set appropriately.

This unit is all about the tube sound that comes from the preamp section. Although there is a tube in each of the three sections, it is the tube in the preamp section that truly gives you the tube warmth, and it is the only tube in which the gain can be adjusted in a meaningful way to achieve that warmth. As far as I'm concerned, the other two tubes are just for show and could just as well have been left out in favor of solid-state technology. The whole point for using tubes is to achieve the addition of extra overtones by driving the tubes into saturation, which only happens during the louder portions of a performance, so long as the gain is set correctly. However, if the unit is set for too much gain, it will of couse sound crappy and buzzy, and you'll completely lose your tone and all your bass and mids. Even when the tube preamp is not pushed into saturation, you'll lose a small, but significant amount of bass. The compressor section is musical and useful, but the attack may be too slow to completely limit the volume of sources with fast transients, such as piano and drums.<br>

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By far the best use I have found for the Pro-Channel is with blues harmonica. A Shure Beta 87 A (a handheld stage condenser mic) through the Art Pro Channel was great for capturing a slightly overdriven, yet still fairly clean and sparkling, blues harmonica sound. It's the main thing preventing me from reselling it on eBay. I thought I might be able to get some cool guitar distortion out of it, but anything beyond a mild to moderate amount of overdrive will sound horrible. I will be trying out some other tubes when they arrive, including the Russian 12AX7 R2 model, which has longer plates and is supposed to provide a stronger bass at the expense of the treble. I'll interested to find out if it will sound fuller when overdriven, although I still don't expect it to sound good beyond moderate overdrive. Bass guitar is probably a better use for this unit, especially with the compressor and EQ sections. I've run an Alesis NanoBass sound module through the Pro-Channel with some good, beefed up results. <br>

As far as vocals are concerned, I am not as impressed as I thought I'd be. While the tube warmth sounds great at the right volume levels, the quieter passages sound a bit dull and lifeless to me. Also, noise can be a problem if the gain staging is not optimised. If you are considering this unit in a live band situation, I emphatically suggest you look at a solid-state channel strip instead. While that tube warmth can really sound hip, those extra harmonics tend to feed back into the unit at even modest monitoring levels. I discovered this the hard way. This problem can be avoided by turning down the tube preamp gain, but then you lose all the benefits of tube saturation and are left with a rather dull and unimpressive sound. Interestingly enough, the same feedback problem occured with a solid-state Voicemaster channel strip with the tube emulator engaged. I've come to the conclusion that tube saturation should generally be avoided in live band situations, because it is much more prone to feedback.<br>

In comparing the Art Pro-Channel to the original single-space Focusrite VoiceMaster (my other channel strip) for vocals, the Voicemaster is a much better unit overall. The only thing the Pro-Channel can do much better at is tube saturation, as the Voicemaster has a useful, though somewhat lacking solid-state tube emulation section. Also, while the compressor section of the Pro-Channel is much more controllable since it has ratio and threshold knobs, I found the compressor section on the Voicemaster to be just about right even without such controls. With respect to evey other aspect, the VoiceMaster is the superior unit for vocals. The VoiceMaster includes higly useful features such as noice reducing expander, de-esser, and absence button, all of which are great for cleaning up vocals. The Pro-Chan

This unit is very solid and the knobs are beefy. The only thing is that tubes, like light bulbs, will fail at some time or other. Solid-state devices are inherently more reliable in that respect. My Pro-Channel has never broken down on me, although admittedly I have not used it all that much.

The Pro-Channel is a useful home-studio channel strip for recording applications in which the tube saturated sound is called for. It shines on blues harmonica, and is useful for bass guitar. I have mixed emotions when it comes to vocals. The tube saturation sounds good, but otherwise the unit sounds somewhat dull and lifeless. BEWARE, the tube saturation tends to cause FEEDBACK in LIVE BAND situations. If your looking for a highly versatile channel strip for a variety of instruments and situations, look elsewhere. If you are seeking an affordable tool for project-studio recording that can provide genuine tube warmth, the Pro-Channel could be a good fit.

The manual is more like a lesson in grade 1 engineering, by useful for a few things. Tells you how to get around the unit, which is helpful in the EQ section. But it is a very straight forward unit, and im sure most engineers would not need to see a manual anyways.

The preamp and the compressor sound great. A variety of different tones and texture can be achieved from super clean and tight right to crazy overdriven and distorted, very flexible. One beef, with the hiss happening on output if there is a lot of gain on the signal. Looking throught the schematic, right before the master gain pot, there is a tube with +10 of gain, followed by the pot which is -10db of gain at 12:00. I think this is adding some unneccesary noise. Either way, its great when you want it warm casue theres another tube in the signal, but if you need the preamp for something you want cleaner, take the output directly after the preamp. But anyways sounds great overall, ESPECIALLY considering the price.

NOthing has ever gone wrong with this unit so far, and I've dragged it around all over the place. On the road no problem.

Never had to use it!

A lot of hard-rock and metal, sounds awesome on vocals and guitars to get that extra grit.

very easy to use, i wanted a compressor that i didn't have to think about to use and the pro channel delivers. you have to set the output levels of each section and then you're ready to rock and roll.

for the price it has a very good sound. the preamp is quiet as long as you're easy on the output level. the compressor is transparent but powerfull. the eq is quiet and i find it very usefull. the tubes warm up a sound nicely. I bought it for vocals but it would warm up any sound.

have had it for about three weeks, seems to be well made. I open all new gear to inspect the construction quality ( and to check for squirrels running in wheels) it looks to be very well made. (and no squirrels)

haven't used it.

using it to warm up rock vocals for digital recording. just what the doctor ordered. fit into my budget nicely too.

It's very easy to use.I didn't need to go to the manual to look for anything.

I love to use pro channel on voices and bass.Hads a color and body to my recordings but the Eq doesn't respond like i wanted him to and it would be better if they put all the frequency range without have to used the selector...I also use Focusrite isa (that costs 4 times more than pro Channel)and i've tested used the same mic(AT 4060) with does 2 pres...and i teel you that the diference is almost none...the only thing that the isa wins is on the Eq...is more precise.But for the price i can't complane at all.If you are thinking on bying one don't think more,go out and by it!

I also use pro channel on the road for the voices and i can teel you that it makes the diference...even with grate mixers like midas and soundcraft, you can't put the voices right in your face without the help of buses (that ads some dbs to it).You'l need to have a extra care with the gear because it is a valve pre but, pro channe has never faild.

never needed

Nu-metal, rock and pop.
Just check the eq section

Very easy to get the preamp and compressor working good right off the bat, but then when you need to eq, it gets crazy. Buttons to push to change frequencies and there is math involved, I know its simple math but when you are trying to cut a bad frequency or give some boost and you have a singer or musician doing there thing its kind of a hassle, but its cool, just going to have to get used to it.

The first thing I recorded on it was an accoustic guitar with a small diaphram condenssor mic, and boy did it sound good. Easy to set the pre and compressor, (but screw that VU meter) didn't eq. It had such a clean warm sound perfect for the guitar lead overdubs, boy did they cut right through but still blended. The next thing I did was vocals, we wanted a very saturated mildly distorted sound heavly compressed for some spaz-core, I got the perfect distortion sound plus the compressor helped level the soft and loud vox parts with out any hint a compressor was on. I used a little eq to help bring the vox out in the mix, I was extremely happy with that sound, but the compressor make up gain is noisey if turned up too much though so watch out for that. I have messed around with it on kick drum tracking (original reason for purchase) but am still experimenting with it but have gotten good results so far

don't know yet, I wouldn't take it gigging, but thats my opinion

I play metal/post-hardcore and record other types of music too, I have been waiting for a nice pre amp I can use on all types of sources. I love the compressor, I am thinking about buying another pro channel and/or the pro vla too. I was very happy with this purchase for what I need it for