Universal Audio Preamps, -who loves them? Options

[holli]

Hi all, anyone out there have any experience of Universal audio preamps et el? Having been blown away with the UAD I looked into their preamps, they seem to be modelled on some great vintage design approaches.

More concisely, what are the pro'sand cons of the 2-620 vs. the 2108?

I'm mainly recording sax and want something to plug my U87 into, be nice to push some other sources through as well. I'm a big fan of the Rudy sound and some of the work that comes out of Avatar (Breacker and so forth). Does anyone who uses them regularly fancy penning a few thoughts on the matter. All the best, Holli.

[Y.M.]

UA 610 was not made as "I can do all" preamp. It is rather a reissue like of a VW bug or of a MINI. If you need a dump track than new "VW Bug" will not work, right?
Avalon and all of the other things mentioned have much longer signal path. That means phase shifts. If you mix several tracks, some of your sounds (vocals) will get lost. Plus they have IC chips. (Cheap-s)

Recently I was recording vocals with U87 + M610 + 1176 + Pro Tools. Yes the singer was able to oveload M610 when sensitivity was set to +10, but so what. When I would go after AC/DC type of vocal than that would be a desired setting.
No EQ was ever needed!!!!

Of course that UA 610 is just another tool. Decent studios have several different solid state and tube things.
You want to get that phat American sound (Sinatra, Green Day) you need to have one UA610. Another famous tube circutry is from those Telefunkens V72. (they use pentodes, pentodes have less of 2-nd order harmonics but have higher gain). Beatles were using them for tracking.

It depends of what kind of sound you are going after.

Go search the web where certain albums were recorded, and get the info about gear that was used.
I have 2 M610 and I love them.