Years ago I ran into a guy showing his tube mic preamp at a booth in the basement of the 2005 NAMM show. He'd built the unit with metal brackets from Home Depot — I kid you not. Since then he's kept at it, and his one-man company, Electronaut, has released the M63 preamp to rave reviews.
What's your background?
I'm a musician and band guy. I grew up in a musical family. My dad's band rehearsed in our living room, and my little sister Caroline is an opera singer and songwriter. My first introduction to audio was in the early '80s. A 4-track cassette recorder, a Peavey PA and some Shure microphones.
Was it your dad's recorder?
Yeah. He was in a skiffle band in Montreal in the '60s; he started writing and recording music again in the '80s. I started messing around with his 4-track from about age nine on. I was fascinated by the ability to do overdubs. That blew my mind! Then I discovered skateboarding and punk rock, played drums in a band and did a bunch of touring. By the mid '90s I was really interested in the recording process. I just couldn't figure out why I couldn't get my recordings to sound as good as my favorite records.
We all keep working on that one!
Sometime around 1997 I stumbled into Specimen Products in Chicago and met Ian Schneller. He's a luthier and amp maker. He had this beautiful wooden guitar amp sitting there. I said, "Where did you get this thing?" And he said, "I made it!" I couldn't believe it. I had imagined that guys in white lab coats from big corporations were the only ones who made electronics. He was really generous. He showed me the circuits and how he came up with all the values and it just sort of clicked. "Oh, so there are formulas and you use them to come up with values." I became obsessed with the idea of making my own electronics. A few days later I went back in and asked him for recommendations on books and that sort of thing. I thought it might take me a year or two to get my bearings... That was in '97! [laughter]
Were you just building and experimenting?
Yeah. I didn't have any singular focus at the time, and I had no intention of making a business out of it. I was just interested in trying to make something cool to augment the recording process. Eventually I learned enough to make a guitar amp from scratch, as well as makeup gain amps for a spring reverb unit, etc. I also made some sculptural/art objects, like a round plate reverb and a resonant, steel, garbage can reverb. As I got better at making things, I decided to try and hone in on microphone preamps. Eventually I got a taste of the audio quality I was looking for and realized, "There's a reason great gear is so expensive!"
Quality components and the R&D behind it?
Mostly just parts quality and assembly time. I mean certainly the R&D [research & development], but to me that's free because that's my time and education — maybe that's not the most savvy business model! But certainly with parts quality, when you start to compromise, you really hear it. When you reach a certain level, it's really hard to go back for the sake of economics. Where is the best place to compromise? I don't want to have to make that choice.
Did you examine how people were building equipment, as well as the parts they were using?
I took everything apart! I learned a lot by studying classic pieces of gear, as well as some modern interpretations of the classics. From what I can tell, nearly everything in the history of recording-related designs is based on some sort of prior art and is an attempt to improve upon it, or to creatively apply one idea to another purpose. I mean, even classics like Fairchild compressors or Pultec EQs are just highly refined and beautifully executed optimizations of some prior proven concept. That's one of the best things about working with tubes — there're over one-hundred years worth of incredible works done by brilliant engineers from all over the world to learn and draw inspiration from.
You've mostly done tube designs. Have you designed solid-state circuits?
I'm pretty much only interested in tube designs. I've worked with solid-state designs, specifically on Flickinger consoles and derivatives from those designs, but my primary interest is definitely with tube topologies.
What draws you to that and what makes it stay fun for you?
Vacuum tubes always intrigued me, even when I was a little kid. I used to look closely to see if I could see lightening inside! [laughter] There's something inherently attractive to me about the kind of quality that can be achieved with surprisingly simple circuits. Tubes really like to be audio amplifiers! They cooperate very willingly and don't contribute a lot of the undesirable things that their semi-conductive cousins do. But, in general, the experimental nature of Electronaut, and the learning process that comes along with that, is what keep it fun for me.
And right now you're still on the one product, and that's your M63 preamp?
Yeah. That early prototype you saw in 2005 never went into production. It took me three weeks apiece to build each one of those! I loved the design and look of it, but it just wasn't going to work as a commercial product. I designed another version, which was my first foray into circuit boards, and the design allowed you to swap out the signal transformers. I was never fully happy with that one because I didn't like having to take the lid off. It's always interesting to swap parts and listen to the result, but ultimately you learn far more by optimizing the circuit design.
If I buy a preamp, I want you to choose the best sounding parts.
Right. The current production of the M63 has no swappable parts. The signal transformers are amorphous-core Lundahls, which are very transparent so any "color" comes from the active part of the circuit.
How does that work?
It's a two-stage preamp. Basically if you run one stage really hard, you're going to get more of its non-linear qualities. Both stages tend to contribute primarily second-order harmonics, as triodes pretty much always do, so if you overdrive one stage distortion will be in the form of a musical octave. If you overdrive the other one it tends to distort with a more even spread of all the harmonics, so you get a different flavor depending on what side you crank up.
With the idea of this preamp, were you trying to go for something really clean or something that had color?
I wanted to see if I could try to achieve both. I personally tend to record clean, but of course there are times when I want to try something different. In general, people seem to appreciate having some options to see if they're appropriate for the sound they're trying to capture. A Fender guitar amp would sound awful if it was perfectly clean! [laughter] Sometimes distortion and non-linearities can be great sounding! I've gotten a lot of feedback from my customers; they appreciate having that ability and I think that's worth something. I also wanted to make something that looked great and was solidly built. If you look at the circuit boards in the M63, they're twice as thick as a standard board. The copper is twice as thick and the power supply is completely, outrageously over-designed. I really believe that power supplies are skimped on far too often in commercial products, which is something the hi-fi world seems to understand better than the recording world. If you think of an amplifier as a modulated power supply, it becomes immediately clear why the power supply is the wrong place to take short cuts.
I know that you dropped units off with friends to try out in sessions. What kind of feedback did you get from people?
This is an area of frustration, to be honest. I've gotten a lot of positive praise from people using the M63, which is great, but it's not all that helpful! [laughter] There have been a few people who have been really helpful and given more specific feedback with regard to certain microphones, etc., which helps tremendously and gives me ideas for things I can put into future designs.
Like variable input impedance?
Yeah. I used to think some of those things were gimmicky, but as I've gotten more experienced with different microphones — some really old ribbon mics especially — I've learned more about why the impedance relationship can really make a big difference. I think having some options there would be nice.
Are there other product ideas?
Tons! It's one thing to design a nice piece of gear, but it's another thing entirely to turn it into a product that can actually be produced, makes economic sense, meets Europe's lead-free requirements and so on. Every single experiment leads to new ideas — it's just a matter of deciding which ones make the most sense in practical terms. But yeah, there is one new design on the way and several others simmering on the back burner.
Does anyone work with you?
Nope, just me.
How much time do you think it takes dealing with the running of the business?
This is why I would love to have some help! [laughter] It takes far too much time, honestly. I have to do every little thing like make the artwork for the ads, figure out how to get the website going, figure out how to try and get people to hear about the M63 and whatnot. It's definitely not my favorite part of doing this, since all I really want to do is focus on designing stuff; however it's obviously a necessary part of it. I bet I only spend about 10% of my time designing and the rest of the time is spent either building M63s or doing some other miscellaneous task. I'm excited for the day when I can somehow increase that to 25 or 50%.
Do you have a distributor?
No, but I have several dealers. Strangely I have more dealers offshore then here. At this point I have a few in the US and Canada, several in Europe, and some pending in the South Pacific, South Africa and Asia. Admittedly, the biggest obstacle is my limited ability to send out demo units for dealers to try out.
Where do you see the company going?
My goal is literally to be an "electronaut," which to me means exploring, observing, coming up with ideas and making things; as well as hopefully contributing something of value which develops enough momentum to keep it all going. At this point my main focus is to get my other designs and ideas completed and out into the world. I only have one product in the family right now and a lot of dealers find it very hard to support your line when you only have one. The end user always wonders if you're going to be around in five years, and that's a very legitimate question. In time, my new designs will become available and people will begin to realize how obsessively committed I am to doing this! Right now I'm setting up a vastly improved lab and design space for Electronaut. I've been getting by with a '70s Tektronix oscilloscope and a '50s-era signal generator for years. I've got this totally old-school tube lab, but I haven't had good data-gathering capabilities or a way to interface my lab with my computer. So, that's what I'm working on now. The new lab is modeled after a studio control room. I can work in a controlled listening environment, tweak circuits all day and night, gather data, plot graphs and make detailed analyses and comparisons to subjective listening experiences.
