Just done 4 days of tracking electric guitars, bass and acoustic guitar with the germaniums. Our studio has an MCI JH-500, plus a pair of TG Channels, 2 JLM Audio TG pre's and a V72 (not a bad selection of pre's for recording these instruments by any means....)
That said, I noticed a significant difference with the Germaniums - particularly in the way they saturate when you drive them and use the feedback loop. With the TG channel, I often found that you could only drive the pre to a certain point (on electric guitar or vocals) before it started getting the crackly, grainy artifacts - at which point I'd usually settle for less drive and back off the input gain. With the Germaniums, you can push the input quite a lot harder and it sounds creamier and rich until you reach full gain, then a bit of the crackle is introduced. It didn't take long at all to find the right amount of input gain & feedback to pull some absolutely superb guitar and bass sounds. One guitar sound in particular was so close to george harrison it was scary - admittedly it was a pretty similar signal chain to what they may have used back in the day at abbey road (except we don't have a Coles/STC 4038...... yet.....)
Gretsch Duo Jet - Vox AC30, miced up with an AEA R84 - Germanium - HEDD, plus a 57 - V72 pre - TG Channel (as a line amp) - HEDD.
****ing killer pre's Wade - you've out-done yourself! My only concern is the longevity of these 'new generation' germanium transistors - there's a bit of a history there and i'm hoping that the problems from the original germaniums have been completely sorted....
Cheerio,
Bent
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