New Gear Just Released - Mammoth Cave Audio - Presale

Nope, never did. Spent the money on a new Innertube retrofit for my U87. :-) They are pretty different beasts from what I can tell....

The inner tube retrofit is amazing - at least at first listen. I've not really had much of a chance to use it yet. Too much mixing and writing, but it looks to be a standout. It retains the low mid's of the "neumann-esque" sound but adds a sparkle / air thing way up top. I think they list around $1500 or thereabouts. It completely replaces the stock electronics with a drop in inside so the swap takes all of 1 minute or so. You can have the best of both worlds. Several guys I trust HIGHLY recommended it, so I bought one used at a ridiculously good price, and it turned out it was for an AI version (I have the vintage). So Stayne @ Innertube swapped it out for a brand new vintage version along with another mic traded for the balance. So....I don't really know how much it cost. I just know it sounds killer.

Re: the mammoth box - the Silver Bullet is more than a magic mix bus processor - it's designed to be a mic pre, and a post mic pre processor that's both mic/line level with a bent towards gain staging and cascading gain stages. It's also meant to be the front end and back end of your DAW. i.e.: right before the A/D upon tracking and right after the D/A insert for mixing. It's also got the Bax EQ to die for. So yeah, I guess they are both "magic" oriented, but one is passive and the other very active. :-)

What are you referring to, unit7?

Yep, I have a Quad and think it's a pretty cool piece.

I've found that I like the nickel and steel settings the best for processing a mix or vocal and adding some sheen. I've used the germ settings mildly for adding a bit of hair to a bass. The Iron feels a bit more hit or miss for me. I think it's a bit more heavy handed than the nickel and steel. It would probably work out better if I strapped it onto the mix from the start and mixed into it, rather than adding at the end, but I've still been playing around with it to get a real feel for what all the settings do, so I've been adding it to different things during the mix process and trying a lot of different settings. It's a real tweaker piece because of all the different settings, at least in my eyes. Maybe once I really get a feel for what I like, it'll be set and forget, but I'm not there yet.

I think it's a good, inexpensive way, for someone just getting started with outboard gear to add a bit of sheen to their ITB mixes, or for someone that has most of their bases covered. If you're trying to really commit to fully mixing with outboard, I would probably invest in getting the compression and eq needs covered first for more heavy hitting.

I also have the rackmount version of the Ground Control Deluxe. I greatly prefer it to my old Big Knob. We also did a shootout between the headphone amp in the Ground Control vs the Emotiva Stealth DAC, Schiit Vali, and the Big Knob and the GC won hands down.

No Massive. It's the Mammoth Cave Audio Wooly Mammoth (mine is the Quad, others are Deluxe or Standard). The line (including the Quad, Deluxe, and Standard) is called the Passive Aggressive series.

English is not my first language and I am not really good at giving a detailed description of how something sounds (even in my own language) so all I can really say about this unit is that I like it for the specific purpose that I use it for (distortion and saturation). If you want me to process something through this box just let me know I will be more than happy to do it for you.