New Music Gear Monday: Daking Mic Pre II Microphone Preamp

Really good standalone microphone preamps are expensive, as well they should be. There’s a lot more that goes into a great design than meets the eye, and for quite some time the price on most premium models has hovered between $800 and $1,200 or so per channel. That’s why the Daking Mic Pre II is so special. It gives you great sound yet doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

The Mic Pre II is basically two of Daking’s popular Mic Pre Ones in a single rack space, and like that unit, it’s based on the classic Trident A-Range console design of the ’80s with few upgrades. First of all, each channel has a high pass filter that’s continuously variable from 10Hz to 200Hz at 12dB per octave that allows you to clean up the low end mush that can happen during recording without losing too much of the bottom like with fixed filter points.

The unit also features Jensen input transformers, class A amplification with 70dB of gain, and extremely high headroom (+24) thanks to its single-sided 48V power supply. Add to that the standard polarity switch, 20dB pad with constant reflected impedance, and switchable power supply and you have a great preamp on your hands.

One thing that’s especially interesting is the metering for each channel. It’s a 20 segment combo VU and “peak hold” LED meter, but the “0” point is midway down on the meter with a high resolution portion beyond that point that shows how much headroom is left.

As with most standalone preamps these days there’s a direct 1/4″ instrument input on the front panel for each channel, with both balanced XLR inputs and XLR and 1/4″ output jacks on the rear panel.

And here’s something that you don’t often see with audio gear these days – it’s totally made in the USA.

As I teased in the opening paragraph, one of the significant features of the Daking Mic Pre II is its price. At $1,099 its price point beats most other standalone preamps of similar sound quality. Who could ask for more?

Find out more about the Daking Mic Pre II here, or watch the video below for more details.