Warm Audio TB-12 "Tone Beast" Tone Shaping Mic Preamp

Unleash The Beast!

The TB12 Tone Beast is a fully professional preamp design with loads of gain that can effortlessly capture an array of sources very well. It is a swiss army knife full of options and tones. With top notch CineMag transformers and multiple discrete signal paths, it's hard to beat the Tone Beast's big, bold, fully-professional sound at this price.

The Tone Beast is a mic pre that likes to be pushed and when pushed will colorize your signal ever so sweetly. The 2 opamps and 2 output transformers at the flip of their switches won't appear to be much different, but as one drives the pre into harmonic distortion, the unique character of each of these components becomes apparent. The Tone Beast is customizable and allows users to source and swap in their own opamps. I've pulled my best tones from this pre right at the saturation point (as loud as I can push the gain before clipping). The output control on the TB12 allows you to limit the signal exiting the preamp even when pushing the gain to really hot levels, giving you maximum control.

When designing the TB12 Tone Beast our goal was to make a microphone preamplifier affordable and jam packed full of options, without compromising the quality and design parameters that make this type of microphone preamplifier so desirable.

Premium Components

The TB12 "Tone Beast" is a fully discrete, high-voltage microphone preamplifier, utilzing CineMag USA Transformers. Have no fear of hurting the Beast, you can push it very hard into full-on distortion if you wish, and these can sound quite nice on electric guitar, bass or anything else that likes some grit. When hand building mic pres I learned a bit about the "subtle" differences component choices can make. A little change here, and another there often times became a huge deal in a finished mix, but isn't always very noticeable at first take.

The different component options in the TB12 are subtle, but when driven into saturation are noticeable and can make a big difference to the way your final mix will sound. Home-based musicians and professional studios alike will find the Tone Beast to be an extremely powerful and fully professional piece of gear that is capable of warming and shaping signals/mixes in a way that is very pleasing to the ear.

Technical Specification

• 71DB OF GAIN
• TRANSFORMER SELECTION PROVIDES BOTH STEEL AND 50% NICKEL CINEMAG OUTPUT TRANSFORMERS FOR VARYING CHARACTER
• TRANSFORMER BYPASS SWITCH ALLOWS FOR REMOVAL OF THE OUTPUT TRANSFORMER FROM THE CIRCUIT
• DISCRETE OPAMP SELECTION ALLOWS FOR CHOOSING BETWEEN A 1731(VINTAGE) AND 918(CLEANER) STYLE OPAMP. THESE ARE SOCKETED/SWAPPABLE WITH YOUR CHOICE OF 2520 6 PIN FOOTPRINT OPAMPS
• IMPEDANCE SWITCH LABELED TONE TO SWITCH BETWEEN 150 AND 600 OHMS INPUT IMPEDANCE
• 2 MEG OHM TRUE HI-Z INPUT ON FRONT PANEL SENDS INSTRUMENT SIGNAL THROUGH ENTIRE CIRCUIT INCLUDING BOTH CINEMAG TRANSFORMERS AND THE DISCRETE OPAMPS. GREAT FOR GUITARS, BASS, KEYBOARDS AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS THAT HAVE A 1/4″ OUTPUT JACK
• 80HZ HIPASS FILTER
• POLARITY REVERSE
• UTILIZES PREMIUM GRADE CINEMAG USA TRANSFORMERS
• +48V PHANTOM POWER
• OUTPUT ATTENUATION ALLOWS FOR SATURATION FLEXIBILITY OF BOTH OPAMPS AND TRANSFORMERS
• ¼" INSERT FOR THE USE OF INLINE COMPRESSORS, EQ'S ETC
• BALANCED XLR MIC (FRONT AND BACK), BALANCED TRS LINE, AND ¼" UNBALANCED INSTRUMENT INPUTS
• BALANCED XLR AND TRS OUTPUTS
• -20DB PAD
• LED VU METER
• 19" RACKMOUNTABLE
• SWITCHABLE 115/230 VOLT IEC POWER INLET.
• CAPACITOR SELECTION BETWEEN TANTALUM AND ELECTROLYTIC FOR DIFFERENT CHARACTERS