Why does my Gates pre have so much gain ?

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Trem2
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Why does my Gates pre have so much gain ?

Post by Trem2 » Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:09 am

This is a Gates Unimote tube pre. Judging by the looks of it its at least 30 years old. I think it used to be part of a portable broadcast rig ?

I plug in a mic and can't even turn up the gain past about 2 before it starts clipping the transients. This thing don't sound too pretty when you fully clip out either.

Even with my older low output mics the highest I ever turn the gain is like 3.

It sounds good so I am not complaining, but just curious as to why there would be all this extra gain that is going to waste.

anyone have any thoughts ?

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A-Barr
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Post by A-Barr » Thu Jan 26, 2006 10:56 am

I have no idea, but I have a similar piece of gear.
It's a Magnasync recording amplifier, from the 50's. It was part of a unit you could use to add sound to film; it's all tubes (and a lot of them), has triad transformers, a great big vu meter, a built in 6aq5 single ended amp that sounds awesome for guitar, balnced ins and outs along with a 1/4" input that bypasses the input tranny and works as a DI .
Anyway, I was using this thing with a ribbon mic, getting about the same level I did with another pre that was set to its max of 70db and I still had like 20 or 30 more db gain available! Maybe it was designed for distance mic'ing with the old low-output ribbons, I don't know, I think it has 2 12ax7's and 2 12at7's, all in the preamp - that's almost as much as a Mesa Boogie! All that extra gain comes in handy to yield a ridiculous amount of distortion on guitar. Anyway, it is odd about these old pre's, mine has 2 settings, one has about 40% the gain of the other and that makes it a lot more usable.
If you're a diy'er you could probably put in a lower value potentiometer if you put an equivalent resistor on the hot part of the pot to maintian the right resistance. For example: say you have a 100k pot in there now, 1 lead going to the tube, the wiper going to the input and the other lead going to ground. You can swap the 100K for a 50K pot and put a 50K resistor between the first lead on the pot and the tube stage that it would connect to so that the tube still sees the 100K resistance. That way you've got the pot controlling just the bottom half of the gain scale. If you want to get really fancy, you could wire in a bypass switch so you could still go to 11 when you need to.But if you're not a diy'er, stay the hell away from that thing's guts or you could get a lethal shock really easily, even when it's unplugged.
Good luck!.

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Trem2
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Post by Trem2 » Thu Jan 26, 2006 11:11 am

yeah - I'll be staying the hell out of this thing. It ain't broke so I ain't gonna fix anything.

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Re: Why does my Gates pre have so much gain ?

Post by joel hamilton » Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:11 pm

Trem2 wrote:This is a Gates Unimote tube pre. Judging by the looks of it its at least 30 years old. I think it used to be part of a portable broadcast rig ?

I plug in a mic and can't even turn up the gain past about 2 before it starts clipping the transients. This thing don't sound too pretty when you fully clip out either.

Even with my older low output mics the highest I ever turn the gain is like 3.

It sounds good so I am not complaining, but just curious as to why there would be all this extra gain that is going to waste.

anyone have any thoughts ?
Those things are great. I had a "bi mote" for a while. Loved it. pretty HUGE sounding actually.
Use it for ribbons on quiet sources and you will REALLY hear it shine.
let it clip a little on a room mic for drums....
Have fun. use it a lot. Get to know it well.
That is a fun mic pre. Totally great.

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supafuzz
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GATES PRE

Post by supafuzz » Fri Jan 27, 2006 11:57 am

I have a gates bi-mote as well and yes it's really hot..you can have your tech guy pad it down but even after mine was modded I can't turn it up too far,

It sounds amazing now..really big and open , old school tube pre.
Super 70 Studio.. Never tell a perfectionist that the mix is perfect!

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snatchman
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Post by snatchman » Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:28 pm

This was back when they were making "real gear"...!.. :lol: ..(just kidding) I think? Probably got some serious "inherent gain" going on also. (just my .2)

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supafuzz
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ribbon mics

Post by supafuzz » Sun Jan 29, 2006 5:32 pm

it was probably hot enough to power ribbon mics that were popular back then
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