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Hatsubai « Famous 80s tones in 1U »
Publié le 16/03/11 à 17:19
(contenu en anglais)
The ADA MP1 was one of the first heavily versatile preamps to ever be released. It was featured on many albums and used by a wide range of famous guitarists such as Paul Gilbert and Nuno Bettencourt. Housed in a 1U chassis, the preamp has quite a few features, including full MIDI integration. It runs on two 12AX7 preamp tubes and has three main voicings -- Solid State, Clean and Distortion.
UTILIZATION
The unit is nicely laid out, but one of the main issues with it is that the numbers tend to jump too much. The front and rear input jacks also sound different, although there is a mod to fix this. The LCD is easy to read, and scrolling through the menu is no problem at all. When MIDI'd up, everything works flawlessly, and the units have proven to be fairly reliable throughout the years. Some people have issues with the buttons, LCDs leaking or LEDs burning out, but quite a few have survived these past few decades. There is also an extremely helpful forum dedicated to these specific units.
SOUNDS
Sound wise, the device emulates the typical hotrodded Marshall sound found so prominently throughout the 80s. Stock, the unit sounds extremely midrange heavy. There is a decent amount of gain on tap, but it's not a ton. Boosting it helps keep it nice and tight, but it then has a problem with getting too thin. Even paired with a good poweramp, I was never able to get a fully satisfying tone out of this device. It was either too boxy, too thin or just wasn't doing it for me. The tube clean is pretty good, and the SS clean actually sounds very close to the JC120, which I enjoyed.
OVERALL OPINION
Some people seem to like this preamp, but I was never able to fully jive with it. They used to be real cheap on the used market, but the prices have gone up a bit. I thought my JCM800 could do a much better gain tone than this ever could, and I'd take that over the MP1 despite the MP1 being a lot more versatile.
UTILIZATION
The unit is nicely laid out, but one of the main issues with it is that the numbers tend to jump too much. The front and rear input jacks also sound different, although there is a mod to fix this. The LCD is easy to read, and scrolling through the menu is no problem at all. When MIDI'd up, everything works flawlessly, and the units have proven to be fairly reliable throughout the years. Some people have issues with the buttons, LCDs leaking or LEDs burning out, but quite a few have survived these past few decades. There is also an extremely helpful forum dedicated to these specific units.
SOUNDS
Sound wise, the device emulates the typical hotrodded Marshall sound found so prominently throughout the 80s. Stock, the unit sounds extremely midrange heavy. There is a decent amount of gain on tap, but it's not a ton. Boosting it helps keep it nice and tight, but it then has a problem with getting too thin. Even paired with a good poweramp, I was never able to get a fully satisfying tone out of this device. It was either too boxy, too thin or just wasn't doing it for me. The tube clean is pretty good, and the SS clean actually sounds very close to the JC120, which I enjoyed.
OVERALL OPINION
Some people seem to like this preamp, but I was never able to fully jive with it. They used to be real cheap on the used market, but the prices have gone up a bit. I thought my JCM800 could do a much better gain tone than this ever could, and I'd take that over the MP1 despite the MP1 being a lot more versatile.