Rupert Neve Designs best-selling Shelford Channel is the definitive evolution of the original technologies in Rupert's classic modules like the 1073, 1064 & 2254, thoughtfully advanced and refined for the 21st century studio.
Originally released as a limited edition and back by popular demand, they are now offering the Dual Shelford Mic Pre: a two-channel version of Rupert Neve's flagship preamplifier that has become an indispensable tool for countless engineers and musicians. The Dual Shelford offers the sonic excellence of two Rupert's Shelford mic preamps in a single rack space with an internal power supply; simply put, these are two channels of the finest microphone preamplification in the world.
The Transformer Gain Mic Pre
Like Rupert's designs from his time in Little Shelford, the Dual Shelford Pre uses a custom step-up transformer on the microphone input that provides the first 15 dB of gain. This specially-designed transformer, along with its careful integration with the surrounding class-A circuitry, is critical to the amplifier's bold, mid-focused magic that can be heard on thousands of classic recordings.
While the majority of the harmonic richness found in Rupert's designs is a product of the output transformer and surrounding class-A amplifiers, this step-up input transformer also imparts a unique musical enhancement of its own. The technical reasons for this are primarily a result of the reactive impedance characteristic of the input transformer and how that interacts with the connected microphone, resulting in subtle, non-linear harmonic enhancement of the lows and an unmistakable sweetness in the high frequencies.
While creating the input stage for the Shelford Channel and Dual Shelford Pre, the goal was not merely to recreate the classic designs, but to advance them: combining the unmistakable sound of the vintage technology with wide-bandwidth frequency response, consistently excellent amplifier performance at any gain setting, and extremely low noise operation.
To achieve this, the custom transformer designs were carefully optimized and complete MuMetal shielding of the input transformer was implemented. The resulting preamplifier is flat from below 10Hz to above 60kHz, resulting in the purest possible tone and the very highest levels of versatility.
What Is Silk?
The Silk & Texture circuit on the Dual Shelford Mic Pre allows you to fine-tune the amount (and type) of harmonic content in the output stage. This means your signal can be adjusted from quite transparent to settings that produce nearly 10x the amount of sonic color as Rupert's vintage modules - and in two very unique modes. No matter what sound you're looking for, Silk can help get you there.
Please Note: The DA11ARC will only decode a 2ch HDMI ARC signal and is not compatible with multi-channel HDMI audio codecs.