I have an Allen and Heath CQ 20 B. I’m looking to see if anyone can recommend a preamp to help dirty up live vocals a little bit. For microphones. I’ll either use a Shure 57, 58 or a 55 Being the CQ20 B doesn’t support additional VST plug-ins. I was looking for some type of hardware preamp such as a useful arts hornet or something similar maybe even a guitar pedal. Looking for minor saturation and vocal fatness / character. Ideally between mic or as a fx send/return for all channels. A pedal sized option not rack mount.
I can’t recommend a specific one but I would think a half decent tube preamp with the gain cranked up would probably work for that.
If you want to experiment, there are small devices made by ART which used starved-plate tubes. They’re really cheap, and small, and are basically a low-headroom tube preamp in a box. They actually sound pretty nice.
Another option might be something like a WARM Audio mic preamp - they have both Neve-style and API-style. The Neve style is pretty soft, and the API style is quite in-your-face in the midrange.
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Thanks for some recommendations. Some have recommended Useful Arts Hornet