TritonAudio FetHead Germanium

Bought it with SM7B to use as a mic booster. Didn't like what SM7B does to my voice, will be returning it. This thing though - it stays, because it is freaking AWESOME. I use it AFTER my hardware compressor and tube EQ as distortion/tone machine to get that 1964/65 Abbey Road sound - bright, crunchy goodness! What it does to my drums, gutars and voices after being pushed with lots of gain from my Klark Tekniks is simply amazing and isn't possible to replicate with any plugin that I've ever heard. This is probably the cheapest and simplest alternative to that Chandler Limited unobtanium preamps you've been dreaming about.

The SM7b is quite gain hungry and my Apollo X4 with Neve 1073 always seemed to do the job quite well. I had seen a cloud lifter in use in the states, but @ €200 I was a little hesitate to buy one. It was then that I came across the fet head and at less that €70 this was something more realistic for me. I treated myself to the Germanium as it apparently made mics sound more open and I have to say that I have not been disappointed. It's like a new mic and sound beautifully clear as do my ribbon mics too! The other good thing about pairing this with a ribbon mic is that you don't run the risk of toasting the ribbon with 48v phantom power, as the fethead needs 48v to work, but doesn't pass this on to the mic afterwards.

In conclusion, I would whole heartedly recommend the Tritonhead FetHead Germanium and will be picking up another one in the near future.

I felt need for extra gain for a ribbon mic and this thing definitely delivered. Not sure about its build quality yet, but so far so good! I'm going to order another piece for another ribbon mic. Can't tell about that "germanium mojo" either, cause I can't compare this against the basic version.

This really made my T.bone RB500 another mic for ambience recording purposes, and I'm sure that this mic is usable now for recording vocals too with the most standard preamps.
Be sure though that your preamp can provide 48v phantom power for this FetHead.

I use this with my electrovoice RE20 mic.

It's really a useful little fellow. When I had bought a DBX286s, I thought maybe I can do away without it since there's already a preamp + audio interface (UAD) in my chain. However, I was mistaken.

The gain from DBX286s was actually noisier than from Fethead. Which was totally unexpected to me. Having that said, of course, it could be even better!

Don't overlook it just because you think you will find a better budget gain source for those hard to drive mics.

Also, there's a lot of comments suggesting where to place Fethead. I tried multiple variations - inserting it directly into mic, preamp, audio interface, separating it via cables.

No noticeable difference, so go crazy.