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- Elysia Skulpter 500 PreAmp
- Home
- 500 series modules
- 500 series preamps
- Elysia Skulpter 500 PreAmp
Product Description
Skulpter 500
An audiophile preamp based on single resistors
controlling a fully discrete Class-A amplifier capable of
complementing any microphone with a remarkably
true and natural sound.
Audiophile Gain Staging
skulpter uses an audiophile topology for setting gain: Fixed resistors switched by a cascade of relays and electronic switches.
This setup is controlled by an encoder with 20 steps per rotation, providing a total of 40 gain values in 1.5/2 dB steps (total gain range: 3 – 65 dB). The actual mic preamp and the direct input have a separate gain value each. If you change from Mic to DI or vice versa, the gain will automatically change accordingly.
When skulpter is powered off its current gain setting is saved automatically, so the preamp will start with exactly the same amount of gain on the next session.
Dual Sound Shaper
The very open and natural sound character of skulpter can be shaped by two independent combinations of saturation and tweaked filter curves:
Shape One: Instruments
The first ingredient to achieve that big, fat sound is adding harmonics (THD). The intensity of this saturation is determined by the input level and the amount of preamp gain. The resulting sound is huge, with a massive body but no harsh peaks at all.
Shape Two: Vocals
Vocals benefit from the same saturation enhancement; and, like a tube-like characteristic curve, this results rather in musical soft clip limitingthan in actual distortion.
Variable Low Cut
An essential standard tool for any preamp is a low cut for reducing low frequency rumble.
Instead of just a single or maybe two fixed frequencies, skulpter offers a variable low cut filter with a wide frequency range from 10 Hz to 375 Hz. The slope of the filter is 12 dB/octave, and its amplifier is a discrete class-A design optimized for especially transparent performance.
Pure Polarity Reverse
The Phase Reverse function has been designed to eliminate the need for an additional inverting amp. This means that reversing the phase will not add any additional circuitry to the signal path, so the sound will remain the same in both positions of the switch.
Switching the phase from normal to reverse (or vice versa) will automatically trigger a signal mute for a few milliseconds to avoid cracking and popping noises.
Signal Mute Switch
Pressing the mute switch instantly reduces the output level to zero. While in this state, instruments can easily be changed on the DI, cables can be swapped, mics can be replaced by others – without blowing ears or speakers. In addition, the mute function comes in really handy for canceling source signals from the recording room when silence is needed for listening to playbacks.
Apart from the dedicated switch, the skulpter automatically soft starts with the mute function enabled for a short moment, which avoids nasty surprises when powering up.
+48V Phantom Power
skulpter generates its own 48V phantom power on board, so this critical supply voltage is completely independent from the quality of the specific rack frame being used. Whenever phantom power is switched on or off, skulpter shortly mutes its output to avoid cracking and other unwanted noises in the signal chain.
Note: In order to avoid accidentally activating or deactivating the phantom power supply, the corresponding button must be pushed for a period of 2 seconds to toggle its function.
