By popular demand, RND are offering the Dual Shelford Mic Pre: a limited edition two-channel version of their flagship preamplifier that has become an indispensable tool for countless engineers and musicians. The Dual Shelford offers the sonic excellence of two Rupert Neve Designs 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.

Rupert Neve's 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.

This special production run will be limited to just 300 pieces worldwide.

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… read more 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 exclusive 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.


See how Silk works in this video from Rupert Neve Designs:

Features:

- The definitive evolution of Rupert Neve's renowned vintage mic preamp technology
- Custom transformer-gain mic preamp features a distinctly musical response
- Dual output level transformers create rich harmonic character without clipping the next device in the chain
- Silk Red & Blue modes with Texture control to precisely dial in the desired amount of classic tone
- Shelford circuitry delivers the essence of classic designs coupled with modern versatility
- Up to 72 dB of low-noise, class-A gain to bring out the best in any source
- Worldwide power supply with double the voltage of the original 80 series modules
- Precisely engineered discrete design, built for decades of use

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