Price paid on Ebay for used unit: $245. . . Lists for around $499 and retails for about$399.

Okay, you can read up on the specs and get a handle on the inner workings of this solidstate wonder in order to understand why it’s such a great sounding unit, but what’s also very surprising is how nice the other features are.

This unit is not only a great preamp, but it’s also a great compressor and A/D converter as well. The pre itself sounds fantastic. It’s warm, smooth, rich, and not overly colored IMO. In fact, it’s the most transparent mic pre I have to date. But what’s just as impressive to me is the fact that it is not a tube design. It sounds like there must a couple of tubes in the unit, but there’s not. It’s completely solidstate, which is nice because you don’t have to worry about replacing some crappy Chinese tube in order to get a usable sound.

The compressor is very functional too. It’s easy to use, and sounds great, and the A/D converter really lends a level of flexibility to this unit that you just don’t see in any pre at this price point. This unit completely eliminates the need for me to stack up and patch together my desktop pre, compressor, and a/d converter, and in just about any application imaginable it sounds better than any one of those units combined anyway.

This unit comes HIGHLY recommended as a mid level pre by many renowned engineers and audio gear heads, but I’m neither. I’m just a musician who writes, arranges, plays, and sometimes performs music. All I know is that this unit is one of the best minor investments I’ve made in my studio.

If you are looking at putting somewhere between $250-$700 into a mic pre do yourself a favor and take a critical and serious look at the TAMPA. Considering what a secondhand TAMPA is going for these days it’s a no-brainer IMO.

Cheers,

Chris