| I own two vintage 1176's (rev H) and have used blackface vintage and reissues. If you are using a Grace and a Gefell, I KNOW that the Urei is the piece adding the noise. It's far from a quiet circuit. For whispering poetry, I'd think a plug in would be just fine, applied in post. It's just one voice and it's there more for the words, than the delivery of the voice itself (of course it's intertwined, but I think you'll get great results with the mic/preamp combo you have).
Just ask her to read for a couple minutes, in a part where you know she's the loudest. Make sure that you have plenty of headroom so there are no peaks (or even close to peaks, probably -8dbFS is plenty), remove the comp from the path, and compress in the computer. If you have to have an outboard compressor, you're going to need something extremely quiet like a Buzz Audio, GML, Crane Song, Intertube. But I'd think that an outboard piece would only be necessary when you have a very dynamic reader who gets very loud and then very quiet instantaneously. |