Massive thanks to my great friends at Retro Instruments for sending me one of their 500PRE to demo! Phil Moore has developed a flexible tube tone titan packed in a 500 series unit. It’s hard to believe that that much tone can fit in such a small space. Three tubes, two transformers, and all the other circuit components flawlessly fit in this pre. Yes, you read that correctly, all that in this little box! I think it’s pretty clear that Phil is a killer Tetris player!

Overview

Based on the Sta-Level, which is an incredibly vibey compressor with a ton of tone and compression abilities (hopefully I can do a review (and own) one of those bad boys some day!) the 500PRE has a deep, rich sound with the ability to add warmth to your source, saturate and even distort your signal if you desire (and I do). With up 75db of gain on board the 500PRE is a great match for ribbons, dynamics or condenser mics. With this pre if you want warm and clean, you got it. If you want some more saturation/color/harmonics/tube squish with the high gain toggle engaged, you’ve got it. The output knob is your friend on this unit, think of it like a fader on a console. It lets you attenuate the level hitting your interphase so you’re not clipping in your DAW while still having a tube-soaked signal!

The build on this unit comes as no surprise. Everything about this 500 series unit matches the build quality of anything you’ve seen from Retro. Military-grade. The three toggle switches are not going to budge if you just accidentally bump them. They take some serious muscle to flip. So no accidentally frying your favorite ribbon mic.

This blog is a little different than any other blog I have done before! I have recorded multiple takes for each source at different gain settings so you can hear how the pre reacts. No eq or compression has been added to the files so you can hear exactly how the 500PRE sounds. From the 500PRE all the files were run into my UA Apollo Quad directly into Logic Pro. I did my best to perform the parts as consistently as I could, as to not distract from the difference in tones. For “simply” being a mic pre, this little unit is really flexible beyond where most preamps go and I’m stoked on it! Lastly, I would definitely encourage you to use headphones or studio monitors for checking out the audio files so you can really hear the 500PRE in action. Let’s put this thing to work!

Keys

MELLOTRON The first source I auditioned through the 500PRE was my new Mellotron M4000D. Starting off on Low Gain the 500PRE delivered a full, clear and warm tone. I don’t want to downplay this. When I say full, clear and warm tone I don’t just say that as a more interesting way of saying it sounds normal. No, this sounded great! Sometimes very full and clear don’t always go together but in the case of the 500PRE they perfectly go hand in hand. Listen to the clip below of the classic Mellotron Mkii flutes on a low gain and high gain setting.

There are 100 different sounds that I could audition with the Mellotron. As a producer and artist thats great but you guys wouldn’t get the blog for another 6 months if I went through each one haha. So in order to save some time I just picked two additional sounds that are classic from the Mellotron, one of the strings patches (labeled 16 Strings) and the vibraphones w/ vibrato (a personal favorite of mine).

On the Strawberry Fields Forever track I really like how on the high gain setting you can hear the part not just have more grit to it but also a thicker sound. With the 16 Strings and Vibes patches you can hear the tubes overdriving the signal especially when you add more notes to a chord. When I was recording these two takes I actually only had the high gain turned up to 30 or 40. Because the Mellotron has a high output I could have totally blown up these two sounds by cranking the input gain even more. With your 500PRE, no matter the source, you can really dial in the exact amount of warmth to distortion that is right for your track. This little pre gives you two stellar input options of low gain or high gain, but even within the high gain there are definitely a range of tonal options. From a subtle harmonics to totally overloaded and overdriven.

SUB37 Next, I pulled out my Moog to see how the 500PRE handled the big lows and lead lines of the Sub37. I chose a variety of different sounds to show how the 500PRE low gain switch gives you a warm, full tone and then how the high gain not only adds some really nice tube grit and overdrive but how it actually gives you a little bit more attack and sustain. Specifically check out the Dynamite riff and Bassline files to hear how it adds that attack and sustain! When I was on the high gain setting around 55 - 75 I could hear how the signal was a little bit brighter with more attack. and what I would call, optimally overdriven vs the highest settings, maxing out around 90-100. At the top of the high gain stage, the signal still sounded sweet it was just hitting the tubes really hard so you could hear things get over saturated and start to sag just a bit, which I’m sure in the right context would be amazing.

The low gain take of the SubSustain line is insanely deep and the 500PRE handles it beautifully! While it’s definitely really fun and exciting to overdrive a signal with the high gain setting, the low gain setting definitely has it’s place. On their own I think the SubSustain and the Theremin tracks sound better on the low gain settings to me, but of course it would depend hearing them in the context of a track.

When I was recording all of these sounds my work flow was really fast with the 500PRE. I was able to make a decision quickly with a flip of a switch (literally) and then jump into the performance. For me thats the kind of gear I want in my studio. Gear that sounds amazing, adds to the musicality of the piece I’m recording or producing and doesn’t get in the way of my workflow. With all of these takes, I never changed the settings on the instrument. The difference you’re hearing is just the low gain vs the high gain. The 500PRE just instantly adds character and more feeling to the music. To me, tube pres make the sources you record/reamp etc more physical. It’s almost as if you can touch it. I know that sounds a little crazy but thats how I hear it/feel it haha. Tubes rule. On to Bass guitar!

Bass

I plugged my Nash P63 into a Radial ProD2 and then reached for the input knob. Tube pres and bass guitar have always gone together in my book, and the 500PRE was no exception to that! I chose two different genres to show off how this pre could work for a rock track or a more soul/r&b melodic bass track. The rock track tune I play a pass with my fingers and then a pass with a pick so you can hear the different bass playing styles that this unit handles with ease.

I could totally see adapting the 500PRE into a tube DI pedal meant for bassists (or any other DI based instrument/signal) on stage or in the studio. That would “solve” my only complaint about this 500 series unit, which is that it doesn’t have a direct input. Other than that this unit gives you everything you need. Maybe someday there will be a MKii verion of the 500 series unit with a DI!?

Electric Guitar

Originally I wasn’t going to demo an electric guitar through the 500PRE because I currently live in a rental space where I can’t record electric guitar through an amp at proper recording volumes due to wanting to still be liked by the people I live close to :) BUT I figured I could record my best imitation of some Niles Rogers type parts just to show how the 500PRE could work as a nice clean DI and of course I ended up adding a little bit of tube drive just to see what it was like. So below is a quick part that I recorded three times at different settings, progressively increasing the gain with my Fender Baja Tele on the middle position with the phase flipped to get a little more of that position 2 or 4 tone on a Stratocaster.

I think you’ll hear that the first one track has some dynamics and sounds the most open and clean and then as you move into the second and the third clip, the dynamics decrease and the sound thickens. This is the tubes giving you some sweet compression! The differences between Low Gain and High Gain 1 are subtle but I think thats the great thing about this pre amp! You can dial in exactly what you need. If the low gain file was just a little two clean and dynamic you could set it to something like the high gain 1 file and get a little warmth, thickness and transient control. Check out the screenshot below. You can even see how with each pass the transients gets more and more leveled out as the input gain continues to get turned up. This happened on every source that I recorded. The high gain passes were more evened out and the low gain passes looked (and sounded) more dynamic.

Drums

Originally I didn’t think that the 500PRE was going to excel on drums. I don’t know why I thought that BUT I’m happy to admit that I was wrong! It sounded amazing. Now in full transparency I wanted to do this demo with a mic that everyone has. The SM57. From the A list engineer to the home studio recorder, everyone has one. Dare I say that it’s the best mic that $100 bucks can buy.

SNARE Of the kit, the stand out source was the snare drum. Listen to the low gain snare file. There is a lot of depth in that snare sound still while maintaining clarity. This could 100% be the snare tone on a record. Being the curious engineer that I am, I couldn’t help but tweak the snare tone with a Pultec EQ plugin real quick and it was incredible. I can’t imagine tracking a snare with the 500PRE through Retro’s 2a3 stereo tube eq! That’d rule! Whether EQ’d or left as recorded through the 500 PRE, this pre on snare is going to set you up for a killer snare tone.

I also wanted to try out the pre on the high gain setting on snare. This example is definitely extreme but it shows off how hard the pre can be hit and still be useable! I think it could be cool to record some snare samples like this to blend into a drum sound. While it is a dramatic example, I think on the right track this would be a great snare tone!

KICK This was my least favorite source to use the 500PRE on BUT I think most of that is due to the fact that I was using a SM57. The 57 has some extra midrange that, as you can hear, makes the kick sound kind of boxy and not punchy. If you scroll down to the mix file below I did use the close mic but I had scooped out a ton of 250 hZ and boosted some sub frequencies and even then it was lightly blended in. So in no way shape or form is this unusable on kick but I’d definitely recommend using a Beta52, FET47, ATM25. Those would make a far better choice to pair with the 500PRE and get you a much better kick sound.

ROOM 1 I placed the 57 about 7 feet away from the kit pointed straight at the top edge of the kick drum. Here is the high gain (input set around 35-45) recording of the room mic. Even without it being overly crunchy or overdrive-y, you can hear how things are nicely being rounded out and slightly compressed by the tubes. If you listen to the mix file below, about 95%, of my drum sound is coming from just the room mic with others mics just lightly blended in.

Vocals

When the 500PRE was first released I read that producer and engineer Jaquire King was talking about how good the 500PRE was on vocals. So of course I had to hear it for myself. I tested my vocals out with my Wunder Audio CM7 GTS and the forever classic Shure SM7b. And I gotta say, Jaquire was right (when is he not haha). Just like on bass guitar, I think tube pre’s also really do something beautiful for vocals. It would be really fun to have one 500PRE set up for a clean vocal on a condenser style pre and then use a second one on a Placid Audio Copperphone or some other lofi, dynamic and use that on high gain to capture a gritty, overdriven sound and blend the two mics!

Mix

Part of my original idea for this blog was to actually write a little jam that would be 100% tracked with the Retro 500PRE. So I wrote this classic-sounding little jam on the mellotron and then filled the track out!

Final Thoughts

STANDOUT I’d have to say the standout source for me with this unit is synths (with snare coming in at a close second). Just the way that you can dial in the perfect amount of drive and character and at the same time give things just a bit more attack is really sweet. Owning a stereo pair of these would be amazing for tracking or post-processing synths to give them some extra life! At the end of the day, there’s not a source that this pre didn’t sound great on.

CRITIQUE So I have two critiques on this unit. My first is that there’s not a DI on the front of the panel. BUT honestly, that is easily remedied with a DI Box that most people have laying around the studio so really, no biggie. My second complaint is this…they don’t make a Retro Instruments Console loaded with these pre’s (YET! wink wink nudge nudge Phil). That would be a mind-blowing console! Just let me know when you guys start designing that, I’ve got a few ideas ;)

In all seriousness, functionally and tonally there’s nothing that I can legitimately complain about. The 500PRE pre is a beautiful sounding pre amp and goes well beyond its regular duties of amplifying your signal. I’ve owned a boutique tube pre in the past that was more than triple the cost of the 500PRE and it didn’t sound like this thing.

Until Phil and the Retro team decide to make a console stocked with these pres, you can load up a 500 series lunchbox with these pres no problem. At $895 these 500PRE units are a steal. If you’re just starting out on your journey into purchasing recording hardware OR you’ve got a few slots in your 500 series rack to fill, I can’t recommend this pre enough.

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All of the demo files and mix stems available for download are intended for educational purposes only and are owned by Brian Dane Hansen.