Tube mic pre into a PT Carbon vs just plugins?

Acoustic guitar (Martin D-35 and Teton parlor,) vocals, mando, eventually a violin/fiddle etc.,  for country song demos. This will largely be of myself to get demo ideas across but I want the demos to be good/high quality. I want to get gear to grow into (hence the Carbon) that will last me a while and not just stop-gap pieces. I intend to use this gear and my acquired skills for other songwriters I work with  going forward.

I also have a vintage ribbon I want to use and it takes an inline booster and maxing the Carbon's gain to get a good signal on it. Part of having a [tube] pre is to acquire some extra gain going into the Carbon for ribbons.

I have a Carbon as well.  I primarily track through outboard preamps.  Most of mine are Neve based.  As for tube preamps, I owned a UA 610 a while back.  It was nice, but I'd look at the Weight Tank WT72. I had owned a Tab Funkenwerk V78, which was their modern take on the V72, and preferred that preamp. 

I'm using the AMS Neve 1073 DPX and a reracked 1272 by Dan Alexander.  Both are great if you like that sound.  The Heritage has my interest peaked as well with their Super 8 that I could add to the Carbon for 8 more Neve Pres over ADAT.  Its not cheap, although not badly priced for what you get.

Your Dan Alexander is the later one with Dans boards and vintage transformers just like all 4 of mine. The Reracked module version has a slightly different faceplate layout, I also think a different PSU.

If a preamp works I don’t care if it’s chip based, Solid state or tube, just that it works . Search for tone not topology. Selling topology is easy, but probably not really a solution.

There are no great aax dsp tube plugins. AAX DSP was a dead on arrival plugin format and very few things were rewritten to be low latency and most developers went fully native after TDM. Most of the aax dsp plugins add more latency than native versions. Only the Sonnox Oxford plugins have less latency in AAX DSP running on those HDX cards than stock Avid plugins while sounding a great deal better but the Oxford “warmth” and Inflator are the last things I would use if you want subtle tube sound. The Sonnox aax dsp plugins still add more latency than the native versions.

Why not just use something like sdrr2, Tupe, or a fuse plug in the mix? Modern x86 and ARM CPUs run circles around the TI DSP chips in the HDX cards.

Or buy a separate pre that’s just much better than a UA610 or an interface pre. There are a ton of them.

You wouldn't say that if you tried to record me with a U87 > API > 1176.

I'd have all your fillings out by the end of the song :-)

I don't think you'd ever regret having an external pre (or several, even). Plugins have come a long way, but they still can't replace high quality pres.

I'm going to agree with others, however, and say I'd take a look at the WT-72 if you really want a tube pre. It's far more versatile than the UA 610. Not that the 610 is bad, per se, just that the WT-72 works really, really well on a lot of sources. I've owned both. I still own the WT-72.

I don't have much yet. The ones maybe worth speaking of: LA-320, Warbler MKIII, and I have a Lewitt 840 on the way. I suspect I'll spend most of my time using the Lewitt and probably the Warbler from time to time, but I could be wrong - just depends upon what sounds best in the chain after experimenting.

I did like the 610 with my Altec 639 Ribbon. I’ll say that.

And I liked it with my U195. I had a fairly early Soundelux U195 with a capsule that could get overly bright at times. The 610 helped darken it up and smooth it out.

The varying impedance versus frequency frequently does favorable things that you don't get from the flat impedance of a transformerless preamp.  The greater the turns ratio (as found in tube pre's) the greater the effect.  For better or worse.  Ribbons tend to prefer it.  Plus, free 'noiseless' transformer gain over 20dB.  Hard to beat.....unless you have a hot condenser then you've got the opposite problem.