Powerful Mic Preamps
We’ve been making mic pre’s since 1992, and despite all those years passing, our original design is still widely regarded as the most neutral mic amp available. Not bad for a 20 year old design!
Overview
Crookwood make 2 mic preamps, the portable Paintpot, and the versatile multichannel MultiPre. Both designs use exactly the same mic amplifier card, so sound identical. And unusually, both can be remote controlled.
A mic amp is an incredibly important device, as once you’ve recorded your musicians that’s it. You can alter loads of things in a DAW, but you can’t remove artefacts or colours from poor mic amplification.
Crookwood mic amps are neutral and transparent so you choose the sound you want, not your mic amp.
Product Chooser
To find your perfect mic amp, choose from one of our ranges below:
Do you need –
Portable Stereo Recording
Multichannel recording & or stagebox
The MultiPre is actually a complete stage box solution, if you need multiple mic pres, you should definitely check it out.
How we do it
A mic amp is basically a high gain amplifier. A Crookwood pre, however is so much more than this as it interfaces the mic to the recorder perfectly.
Lots of Gain
At the heart of all our preamps is a balanced high gain amplifier. This amplifier is actually made up of several sections because one amp can’t do it all properly. This together with the balanced approach means our stereo preamps, actually have 8 channels of amplifier in them. More expensive, but a lot more accurate.
Because of the high amplification, you’ve also got to make sure that everything around the amplifier is quiet too. This means thinking about the power supplies, passive parts, circuit board layout etc, etc. It’s no wonder that it’s so difficult to make an accurate amplifier, and why our preamps are unique.
Superior Interfacing
Once you’ve got a great amplifier, sadly this is only the start of the process. You need a circuit to properly interface to the microphones, and other circuits to interface to the analogue outputs, digital outputs and so on.
We’ve had loads of experience of getting this right, so you can be confident that no matter what mic, or what cable you use, our preamps will get the best out you the session.
Competitive Pricing
Our preamps aren’t cheap, but they’re not expensive either if you compare what they offer.
For example if you add the costs of a splitter, MADI interface and 32 channel preamp together, you’ll find the MultiPre will be pleasantly less expensive than buying the parts separately.
Want to know more?
Contact Crookwood for more information.
Greetings,
In searching for some information on the paintpot preamp, I ran into a post on the crookwood facebook page introducing the newer “mic can” (November 17, 2017). However, that’s the only place where I could find any info about it…I don’t think it’s even listed on this website.
I’m interested in both the paintpot and the mic can and would love to get some pricing information. Does either need to be custom ordered?
Thanks!
Crookwood has got 2 models, the Paintpot and the MultiPre. They are designed for different applications, but they actually have identical preamp and ADC circuits inside.
I am a sound engineer in Korea.
I bought painpot 5ea (10 channels) in 1995.
I used it and still can’t forget the thrill.
It’s a shame that the studio is gone now.
Now I’m going to decorate my own studio again.
We are currently preparing for the lack of budget.
Again, I am looking forward to meeting the preamplifier with joy.