ART ProMPAII Two Channel Discrete Class A Microphone Preamp

If you are looking for your first pre-amp (or a versatile swiss army knife of a unit for your rack) and there is any doubt in your mind over buying this pre take it from me personally that this is worth it. The only bad thing I could manage to find is the tubes are sub-par to the rest of the unit, which those are easily upgraded. Everything is wonderful, the metering is accurate and the controls are simple and sturdy. It adds plenty of flavor to your mics; I use an Shure Sm7b which is relatively flat and this pre warms it up beautifully. It has all the gain you'll ever need and the impedance control can totally flip the sound of your mic from open and large to tight and in your face. The adjustable voltage function squeezes an entire new flavor into the unit, which makes it incredibly versatile on a very large array of sounds. One of my favorite uses is the High Z Instrument input on the front. I love the way this unit warms up a bass guitar before sending it into a DI. On terms of quality, this box holds nothing back. If you are mixing music primarily "in the box" and don't have any hardware, I highly recommend this unit to start.

OMG, this preamp makes my guitars, especially my acoustic, sound like butter. The tube warmth is definitely worth the price. I have my vocal microphone on one channel and my guitar on the other, both feeding an AXE IO usb interface. I can drive the guitar channel into the warmest distortion you’ve ever hear. Butter, butter, butter!! This makes me want to get the smaller single channel tube preamp from Art to take for open mic night!

I am an audio engineer since 2010 acquiring my audio engineering certificate from MAXIM Entertainment Group.These are extremely reliable and durable. Very easy to swap out the stock tubes if you feel you'd like to play with different tubes. I cannot express enough how clean and perfect this preamp is for all recording needs. I have never had a problem with these, I have 3 of them. I also have an Avalon 737, and comparing the two, these ART's with Tungsol Gold Pin tubes are a beautiful matching. If you're starting your own studio or looking for a quality preamp that won't break the bank, these bad boys with get any job done.These have sounded great with any mic I have used with them.

Can you find a better sounding mic pre with more functionality than the ART Pro MPAII? Absolutely. Can you find a better mic pre anywhere near this price range? Not in my experience.The controls are intuitive and the sound is excellent. My only two complaints are:1.) The stock tubes that come with this unit are CHEAP. If you get this, I would recommend ordering a pair of high quality tubes as well. I went with TungSol 12AX7 Gold Pin tubes, and the difference in sound was substantial. l'd probably have bumped my rating up to 5 stars if the stock tubes had been better.2.) It would have been nice if ART had put the XLR inputs on the front of the unit next to the 1/4 inch inputs. As it stands, the XLR inputs are on the rear. I have my components mounted in a stationary rack integrated into a desk, and hooking up mics can be a bit of a chore. This is a small complaint, but it's something to be considered.Beyond that, this is a great buy for someone looking to see big improvements in their sound without spending vast sums of money.

I bought this to upgrade a Presonus Blue Tube preamp being used for microphones at a small church. The Presonus has two XLR mics plugged into it. Output is into 1/4 TRS which feed into pre-existing wiring which feeds into a Presonus StudioLive. I replaced the Presonus with this ART Pro MPAII. No matter how settings are manipulated (spent approx. 2 hrs experimenting), I could not get this ART Pro MPAII to even come close to matching the output of the Presonus Blue Tube preamp.I was not looking for a lot of "tube coloration". The ART Pro MPAII output level or quality could not come even close to matching the much less expensive and much older Presonus Blue Tube preamp.

Have purchased two of these units, and one failed within the first year. The working unit is a flexible and noise free pre-amp feed into my studio, serving two independent channels of vocals. You have absolute control of every facet of the sound, with pre-amp and boost, gain, balance and volume selections, and I love the old radio station style Vu meters which remind me of my old days as a DJ.My failing unit had multiple independent problems pop up immediately - it was being used as a stereo infeed with the left channel on one side and the right channel on the other - which is managed by the button selector on the right side of the ART Pro MPA II. The balance was hard to manage, until I noticed that the right side was intermittent and dropping out altogether at times. I had to switch off the unit power and then back on to get some stereo time out of the unit. But the right channel would fail again later. Then the left channel Vu light burned out.So, ART finally gave me a RA and I have returned that for repair/refurb.UPDATE: I was sent a refurbished device which had obviously been dropped - as I had to take a pair of channel locks and bend the rack mount wing back into a straight alignment - and one of the Vu lights was not working right out of the box. So the refurb specialist hardly even looked at this unit they sent me.This is the last ART device I will buy.

works as advertised. a very good preamp for the price, i have owned it over six months now and have had no issues. as another reviewer on here suggested, i replaced the stock tubes (only spent ~$30 more and bought those on amazon too). replacing the tubes took all of ten minutes with a screwdriver and increased the tonal/sonic quality of the preamp even more. You would be hard pressed to find something better at this price, especially with the new tubes...it could probably do reasonably well versus a preamp significantly higher priced.

Has an interesting color to the sound... there isn't as many sounds as I was expecting out of this piece... but overall and for my budget I am more than grateful for its capabilities.