I really haven't had these CAPI's that long and haven't been doing much recording at all lately but a couple of projects have cropped up so it's time to knock some dust off. So far, all I've really used the VP25's on are vocals, e-guitar and taking the mic out of my U5 into a VP25 for times I want a larger, rounder tone, at the expense of some of the U5's punch.
On the vocals I've used it for, I've been pretty happy overall, especially when recording a thinner vocal, as as advertised, the VP25 does have a beefy sound and beefier than the VP26 from what I''ve read but overall, there isn't really any info on the 25's around here.
I find that the amount of beef it has doesn't seem to really agree with me, as far as acoustic guitar goes - and I'd say acoustic is probably something I record 50 % of the time. It's not that it's "bad" I just find it doesn't really catch as much detail as many pre's I've used in the past and this is a bit of a disappointment but admittedly, when I bought the pair, I wasn't really thinking I'd be using them for acoustic guitars but a deal for a pre that would have been perfect never came to be
Anyways, I decided to run a quick, down and dirty A/B with it against a "clean" preamp and the difference isn't subtle, like you often hear in shootouts. Sounds like 2 completely different guitars to my ears at least. There ARE aspects of the CAPI that I really like in this test, and that's namely the lower overtones but it just doesn't catch the transients the way I'd like and there's not much shimmer.
The 2 different pre's are hard panned L/R.. No EQ or compression applied.
I'm now wondering if I should have got a VP26 or 312
VP25 Vs CLEAN