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The Rupert Neve Designs Portico? Ahhh . . . a new line of half- rack space units with three things in common: custom designed transformers, minimal crossover distortion, and minimal negative feedback. These are some of the most important ingredients in the recipe for a great mic pre amp and consequently the 5012 received minimal negative feedback from this reviewer.
Please save your laughter for the end of the review.
I have to admit my first impression of this pint-size, plastic- looking, dual pre amp left me a little underwhelmed. But what appeared plastic was actually folded steel and there was nothing pint size about the sounds that came out of this thing. Indeed, the small size lends itself to RND's mandate of short signal paths, not to mention the fact that it encourages you to buy a second unit so that it can be properly rack mounted.
The usual amenities are also all there: phantom power, phase switching, and a high quality stepped gain attenuator, as well as a continuously variable trim pot, but you're also treated to a sweepable low-cut filter ranging from 20Hz to 250Hz. I'm a big fan of these types of filters - sometimes I want to start carving into the low mids and sometimes I just wanna eliminate a little rumble. So that won big points with me. In addition to a mute switch for each channel and the ability to buss the channels together to a separate output, there's also the mysterious "silk" switch, which applies to both channels and which I have yet...