Rupert Neve Designs RND-5025

Rupert Neve Designs RND-5025 Limited Edition Dual Shelford Mic Pre

The Rupert Neve Designs 5025 is a limited edition run of the widely acclaimed Shelford channel, now you can have two Shelford Microphone preamps, including silk, in one rack space. The Dual Shelford offers the sonic excellence of two Rupert Neve Designs Shelford mic preamps in a single rack space with an internal power supply.

The Transformer Gain Mic Pre

Like Rupert’s designs from his time in Little Shelford, the Dual Shelford Pre uses a custom step-up transformer on the microphone input that provides the first 15 dB of gain. This specially-designed transformer, along with its careful integration with the surrounding class-A circuitry, is critical to the amplifier’s bold, mid-focused magic that can be heard on thousands of classic recordings.

While the majority of the harmonic richness found in Rupert’s designs is a product of the output transformer and surrounding class-A amplifiers, this step-up input transformer also imparts a unique musical enhancement of its own. The technical reasons for this are primarily a result of the reactive impedance characteristic of the input transformer and how that interacts with the connected microphone, resulting in subtle, non-linear harmonic enhancement of the lows and an unmistakable sweetness in the high frequencies.

The Dual Output Level Transformers

Complementing the Silk circuit are the custom-designed output transformers, which use Rupert Neve Designs’ distinctive dual output topology. These offer both Main (+26 dBu) and -6dB (+20 dBu) outputs, allowing the engineer to drive the preamps fully into classic transformer saturation without clipping converters and other devices later in the chain.

Silk / Texture

Pushing the Silk button cycles the Silk modes from Red to Blue to OFF. Silk reduces the negative feedback on the output transformer, adding harmonic content as the texture is increased. Red Silk accentuates the musical harmonic saturation from the mid and high frequencies, while Blue Silk accentuates harmonics from the low and low-mid frequencies. By manipulating the Texture control, the amount of Silk can be changed from essentially absent, to roughly 4-5% THD (mostly second order) depending on how hard the output transformer is being driven.

Specifications

• INPUT IMPEDANCE
• 2.2 kΩ
• MAXIMUM INPUT LEVEL
• @ 1 kHz: +24.9 dBu
• @ 1 kHz (Main Out): +26.7 dBu
• @ 1 kHz (-6dB Out): +20.7 dBu
• FREQUENCY RESPONSE
• 20 Hz to 20 kHz: +/-0.25 dB
• 10 Hz to 62 kHz: +/- 0.5 dB
• 5 Hz: << -3 dB
• 70 kHz: -3 dB
• THD+N% (BW 10Hz - 90kHz)
• 0dBu Input, 1 kHz: < 0.0025%
• +20dBu Input, 1 kHz: < 0.008%
• NOISE AT MAIN OUTPUT (BW 22Hz - 22kHz)
• 0dB Gain: -102 dBu
• +30dB Gain: -94 dBu
• +66dB Gain: -61 dBu
• EIN (+66dB Gain): -127 dBu
• NOISE AT -6dB OUTPUT (BW 22Hz - 22kHz)
• 0dB Gain: -107 dBu
• +30dB Gain: -100 dBu
• +66dB Gain: -67 dBu
• EIN (+66dB Gain): -133 dBu
• PRODUCT DIMENSIONS (W x D x H)
• 19” (48.3 cm) x 9.2” (23.4 cm) x 1.75” (4.4 cm)
• SHIPPING DIMENSIONS (W x D x H)
• 24” (61 cm) x 13” (33 cm) x 4” (10.2 cm)
• SHIPPING WEIGHT
• 11 lbs. (5 kg)