Thermionic Culture Earlybird 4

The 3u 19" Earlybird 4 has a unique valve design, in that it uses Class A bias valves in a push-pull circuit.

Company founder and chief designer Vic Keary believes that this is one of the finest pre-amplifiers available today, and despite their use for distortion in poweramps, valves have better distortion and lower noise than solid state amps. Due to specially designed Sowter transformers the Earlybird 4 boasts well under .01% distortion, as Vic explains "it's like connecting a pair of wires with gain to your mic, it's so clean!"

It has a very high output level of +32dB and if desired, 2nd order harmonics can be introduced by increasing mic gain and reducing output gain.
The unit has switched gain controls with a maximum of 62dB of mic gain and a variable output along with pads, phase and stepped filter. A pair of meters can be switched between 1 & 2 and 3 & 4.