ART PRO MPA II

Since 1984 ART (Advanced Researchand Technology) has offered the audio industry affordable audio solutions that deliver unmatched quality

, tone, versatility and reliability. They have fully developed a line of various vacuum tube preamplifiers and compressors to suit any musician or engineer’s needs. Their goal is to redefine the performance versus price barrier that exists with most tube gear today.

            After lots of research and going through forums I decided to pick up the ART PRO MPA II to try out myself. This two channel tube preamp is equipped with two handpicked 12AX7 tubes for their gain stage, selectable +48V phantom power on each channel, completely variable input impedance for flexible microphone voicing, 2 large VU meters for monitoring as well as backlit switches and even has a Mid/Side option for stereo miking. With low gain this preamplifier will barley output any noise due to its discrete class-A microphone input. Some of the given specifications are that it has a very wide frequency response but has a low cut filter if you would like to roll off some of your bass frequencies up to 200Hz. A cool meter that I really liked about the ART PRO MPA II is that it has a tube warmth meter to show you how hard you are actually driving the tube.

            To test out this greatly packaged preamp I decided to call over a friend to track some guitar and compare to the preamps on my Digidesign 003. To do this I recorded a Direct Output from the guitar into Pro Tools 10 and simply re-amped the signal through my Hughes & Kettner Matrix 100 amp. I miked the amp with a Blue Encore 200 at about the middle of the cone with a slight a slight angle pointing the microphone towards the edge of the cone. Since I wanted to get a crunchy guitar tone that held the low end but still had a lot of attack in the high end I decided to drive the tube pretty hard. I was very surprised and pleased with the results; the ART PRO MPA II truly delivered as I had hoped. The drive from the 12AX7 tube filled in the low end that I had wanted and added some warmth to the tone of the guitar without distorting and just making the guitar sound too “fuzzy”. The high end attack that I had wanted sounded absolutely perfect, it was a full sounding very prominent crunch that accented just the right notes to make the lead guitar stand out over the rhythm guitar in the track. Overall I was very satisfied with the results that the ART PRO MPA II had provided. The best part of it all is that this really great preamp is available for the low price of only $269 for the analog version and only $399.99 for the Digital version which gives you built-in AD/DA converters, up to a192kHz Sample rate, and both S/PIDF or ADAT output options. ART really stood by their mission when it comes to this product and you will definitely get the most “bang out of your buck” with this preamp.

            This is already a great preamp that I have several options to use it with in the studio, especially guitar, but several engineers also purchase these preamps to modify them to get and even better sound, tone and color out of them. If you do your research online you can find ways to modify this preamp by switching out the 12AX7 tubes so that you can get a different “color” of distortion out of your tube and by switching the capacitors to have an even cleaner signal. Pretty much for their price point you can’t get a better preamp unless you’re looking to spend over $1000 for a single channel preamp. A quick easy tube swap in the ART can even give you comparable results to some of the higher end preamps that are available today such as the UA 610. Overall the MPA II is definitely a preamp that will be in my studio for quite a while due to its unique color characteristic and all the endless possibilities of tone that I can get between the tube gain stage the variable impedance knob and the final output gain stage it is a really robust and versatile preamp which I am glad to have in the studio.