Welcome to vintageamp.dk

My name is Tommy Hansen, and I'm the caretaker of the vintage shop.
What's inside the shop? Basically it's about recording gear - original, genuine microphone pre-amps, eqs, from Neumann, Lyrec, Ntp & Disa.
Valve & solid state design - You will find them both as originals.
You might also find some old instruments in there.
It could be an original Farfisa electronic organ from the mid sixties,
or the memory moog from the mid seventies.


In the last 40 years, I've been working as a music producer/engineer.
The most succesful band I've ever recorded, is the German Band Helloween. ("Keeper of the seven keys", etc.) However, I do all sorts of music genres - not just Heavy Metal, but also straight forward Rock'n'roll, blues, pop and even dance stuff.
Around 1990 I started to work with vintage mic pre-amps, mainly the PV-76 from Neumann. They were a revalation -
My recordings sounded so much better. All I had to do, was to pick a good mic, place it, plug it and record it! Straight onto a track. Simplicity rules! Using the Pv-76 gives you a sound, with a lot more "character" in it. Starting off at this level is so cool, cause you already have got the sound right, from the very beginning of the record process. The guitars just sounds right! The impulses of the drums are sparkling, vivid and kicking! The vocals are in your face and the bass just sounds absolutely great.

Why use fifty years old mic-preamps, when you can get brand new ones? What's the secret about them?

Well - to begin with, they were produced in a time era where things were done decent and properly. They were mainly sold to the Broadcasting industry, who had goverments behind them, financilally. Those facts made it possible to produce the units at a very high standard, both in terms of components used, and also according to the demands from the radiostations. All units were balanced in /out and able to drive a 600 ohm load. Those were the standards of the times.
Compared to modern technology, the vintage units are much simpler in their layout. Today a lot of integrated-circuits are used.
One IC might contain like 50 transistors and resistors, all in one package. Several of those IC's are used to make the Pre-amp. Little portions of phase artifacts occur when the signal passes through the device. In the end, the signal has travelled far, before arising at the output.
The vintage unit does not make phase errors in the same way, and the distance between the input and the output, is considerable shorter, producing a more direct and relaxed sound. The constuction is straight forward. No magic going on here, it lies elsewhere.
The magic is happening in the transformers, carrying the signal in and out of the device. Some distortion occurs in those compo-
nents, but it's a nice one, one that gives a flavour to the signal being processed. You can actually hear all the "IRON" in the core of the transformer. Since they were made to drive a 600 ohm input impedance, the outputs has lots of headroom. They kick!

The PV-76 from Neumann are getting rare these days. I came accross some PV-46, that was originally seated in a big old Neumann desk from the sixties. I realised, that they were totally identical to the PV-76, except the gain was only max. 46 db.
In my time working with music production, I never needed 76 db of gain. Normally I fiddle about, around + 20 to +34 db of gain. The transformers, the most crucial part of the construction, are also 100 % identical to the PV-76.
I decided to build the units into 19" rackcases. I can offer you two different layouts, a stereo version and a 8 channel version.
The experience from working with the PV-76, made me change the gain setting procedure, cause I always found it annoying to set the gain correct, at low gain settings. You have 12 db jumps with the Pv-76 at the low gain area, so I decided to change that.
By now you have a real smooth controlling area of the gain, particulary where it's needed! Phantom-power is not standard on the PV-76. I decided to add phantom-power. So you are offered an updated version, with the original circuit board from 1962 inside, improved for your convenience.