Man is this sucker built like a tank. All the color is in the chassis, this is a very hi-fi piece of kit. Basically makes your input sound huge and great without adding anything else. Sounding great, working great and looking great except for a few dings in the anodized aluminum chassis, which I have done my best to get pics of. Did Rupert Neve design them? He definitely designed the father, the focusrite ISA 110, but I think the Red series was an 'adaptation' of his designs. I'd reckon pricing. IIRC you could get a Red 1, 4 pres, for half the price of a ISA 220, 2 pres - that approx $2k in 1993 dollars instead of over $4K. They didn't get much love because digital set everyone loopy over Neve and API coloration. Anyhow, here's some pretty pictures and I pack for WW III. I'll ship anywhere at cost from Virginia USA.
Also - From Focusrite at the time:
Using the same circuit topology as the original ISA pre-amp designs, the Red 1 offers four channels
of ultra-high quality Focusrite microphone pre-amplification. Used with high quality ribbon, valve and condenser mics, the Red 1 obtains outstanding results with any sound source, but especially voice, piano and string instruments.
With four mic pre-amps in a single unit, the Red 1 is ideal for those looking for improved audio performance, as a compact
‘way in’ to digital recording systems, or for location multi-mic recordings. Each channel offers custom-wound Focusrite input
transformers (i think they're lundahl), switchable phantom power, phase reverse, an illuminated VU meter, and a handy scribble disc for denoting
channels. Mic gain is also switched for accurate, precise channel matching and recall.
The many benefits of the unique Focusrite pre-amp topology include superb common mode rejection, a good overload margin
and, with its shared gain structure, (20dB from transformer and up to 40dB from the amplifier) a very low noise floor with the
signature wide bandwidth (10Hz to 200KHz).
It also maintains this level of performance with a very wide range of impedance across the inputs. In practice, this makes it
what one reviewer called,
“perhaps the most revealing yet forgiving mic pre-amp in history.”
The output stages the Red 1 with their custom transformers, will easily drive very long cable runs – up to
several kilometers – without significant loss of quality, making them ideal for remote recordings.
AND, to give you a hint of who focusrite was sucking up to at the time...
The Focusrite Red Range is hand-made, crafted to the highest standards. All the Red Processors are manufactured solely in the UK using machine-tooled, half-inch thick claret red anodised aluminium. The chassis features recessed section grooves and styling motifs, (sculpted with diamond-tip cutters,) porthole windows, and printed silver control text, and firm-response illuminated switches. All potentiometers are manufactured to Focusrite’s own specification by French company ‘Sfernice’, and are made from conductive plastic which gives more sensitivity and no mechanical resistance (easy to make very fine adjustments). All Red products feature sealed relays, (gold-plated silver in an inert gas,) situated in the middle of the circuits in which they switch. The precious metals mean that all contacts are low resistance, and the gas prevents any kind of corrosion of the surface of the contacts, meaning the most perfect audio switching device ever designed - utterly passive, zero distortion caused and no FET’s required. Red Range processors with mic pre’s feature solid-state-amplified audio transformers, which help to give the characteristic “warm, organic sound” loved by studios world-wide. Transformers are the only way of giving a truly floating and earth-free system, because there’s no galvanic connection between the input and output circuitry. Transformers are not new in audio; they were there at the outset, but whilst others were trying to design them out to cut costs, Focusrite went after the best transformer possible, a philosophy which resulted in the transformers you find in the Red =series today. Low frequency second order distortion created by transformer saturation provides the character that many perceive as ‘warmth’. Meanwhile, a high frequency emphasis generated by the reactance of the coil resonance with the terminating impedance of the microphone or receiving device, provides the engineer with open, spacious high frequencies. The Red Range mic transformer in particular gets its legendary “transparent yet warm” label from this process, an apparent contradiction in terms, yet a genuine characteristic – audition a unit and hear for yourself.
