Daking Mic Pre One Review: A Great Preamp That Travels

Having an API console and racks full of preamps does not eliminate the need for something that can simply be picked up and taken somewhere.

That is one of the reasons we own two Daking Mic Pre Ones.

The Mic Pre One is a deceptively simple single-channel microphone preamp. It is also built like a brick—almost literally. The heavy enclosure feels as though considerably more effort would be required to damage it than most of the equipment you would connect to it. That is particularly reassuring because ours regularly leave the studio for remote recording.

But portability would not matter if the preamp were not worth using in the first place.

It is.

A different flavor

The Mic Pre One uses a discrete Class-A preamp design with a Jensen input transformer and draws on the Trident A-Range lineage associated with Geoff Daking’s designs. The result has enough personality to provide a useful alternative to our API preamps without turning everything that passes through it into an effect.

The control we wish more preamps had

Our favorite feature is probably the continuously variable high-pass filter.

Rather than forcing you to choose between a few predetermined frequencies, you can listen while gradually raising the cutoff until the unwanted bottom disappears, then back it off slightly.

That is much more useful than it may sound.

The rest of the controls cover what a professional preamp needs without cluttering the box: pad, polarity reversal, phantom power, gain control and metering. The instrument input also makes the Mic Pre One a very useful DI.

The power supply

There is one practical annoyance.

The Mic Pre One uses an external inline power supply connected through a dedicated multipin connector. That keeps the power supply outside the audio enclosure, but it also gives you another proprietary item to remember when packing for a remote session.

Do not lose it.

Verdict

The Mic Pre One manages a useful middle ground. It is not intended to be an absolutely invisible laboratory preamp, but neither does it impose exaggerated vintage coloration on everything.

We can throw two of them into a remote rig and know exactly what we are getting. Back in the studio, they are equally useful when the API is not the sound we are looking for. And the variable high-pass filter frequently eliminates the need to insert another processor simply to clean up the bottom of a source.

That is why we have two.

Highly recommended.

Specifications

• Type: Single-channel microphone/instrument preamplifier
• Amplifier: Fully discrete Class-A transistor circuitry
• Microphone input: Jensen transformer-isolated
• Gain: Approximately 25 dB minimum to greater than 70 dB maximum; 20 dB input pad
• High-pass filter: Continuously variable, 0–200 Hz
• Phantom power: +48 V
• Polarity: Switchable
• Instrument input: Front-panel high-impedance 1/4-inch input
• Outputs: Balanced XLR plus 1/4-inch line output
• Power: External DC supply

Manufacturer: Daking Audio