Golden Age Project PRE-573 MKIII 500 Series Microphone Preamp

The Golden Age Project: affordable, high-quality vintage-style electronics

The Golden Age Project was founded in 2005 on the belief that vintage gear sounds best, and the desire to pass on this sonic legacy to a new generation of musicians, engineers, and producers. All-discrete, Class A signal paths with no integrated circuits; the use of transformers, stepped controls, and military-grade build quality: these are the cornerstones of the legendary British equipment deployed in world-class recording and broadcast studios in the 1970s — the Golden Age of analog. Fat, warm, punchy, and authoritative; this is the sound heard on countless hits for nigh unto half a century. Locating, purchasing, restoring, and maintaining vintage gear is time-consuming and costly. Fortunately, this small, family-owned Swedish company makes gear the same way it was made back in the day — at an amazingly accessible price.

A distributor of high-end studio equipment for many years, Golden Age Project founder Bo Medin wanted to be able to offer products with much of the same exclusive sound in a price range that made them available to a larger audience. Inspired by original designs, Golden Age uses modern technology to re-create that lush, opulent sound, making it surprisingly affordable. They use some modern ingenuity to add new functionality to superb classic designs and produce them in a cost-effective way which allows them to be both optimized and affordable. Suhavimart’s advice: From outboard equipment to condenser, dynamic, and ribbon mics; you can outfit your entire studio with vintage-inspired Golden Age gear without exceeding your budget.

Golden Age Project PRE-573 MKIII 500 Series Microphone Preamp Features:

• Vintage-style electronics with tantalum capacitors and no integrated circuits in the signal path
• Fully-floating, transformer-balanced output can drive a 600 ohm load up to level of ≈28dBu
• 80dB of gain in Mic mode easily handles passive ribbon mics on quiet sound sources
• Total gain range: -10 to +80dB; 20 to 70dB range (in Mic mode) is adjusted by a rotary switch plus a toggle switch that selects an additional 5 or 10dB gain
• Switchable impedance on the mic input: 1200 or 300 ohms; optimizes for a variety of mics
• Input configured to accept line-level signals via switch that attenuates level is by ≈30dB and increases impedance ≈10k ohm
• Selectable 2-position 6dB/octave highpass filter: 45/180Hz
• Flexible front-panel instrument input for electric guitar or bass that can be switched between hi-Z active and mid-Z passive modes, making it possible to obtain different tones from instruments
• Output level control for fine gain adjustments and driving the main gain stage for more character
• Insert jack for inserting Golden Age Project and Premier 500 Series EQ and FX units (activated by removing jumper on the rear of the module
• Soft-start circuit ramps up supply voltage slowly (≈10 sec.) to avoid power-on current surge
• Polarity switch and switchable phantom power with LED indicator
• Selectable Air equalizer adds a ≈6dB boost centered at 30kHz
• Simple, effective single-LED signal/overload indicator starts glowing red at +4dBu and then increases its intensity up to the maximum output level
• 6.8k ohm phantom power resistors are matched to within 0.1% to maintain excellent common-mode rejection
• Selectable 600 ohm output termination at rear of module
• Circuit board star grounding scheme
• Robust build quality for years of reliable service