I'm excited to keep digging into this project and to share my results with you. My first layouts of the BA283 Preamp and Output sections Follow Along Then I'll spend a few weeks tweaking and listening, to get a sense of which parts sound best together. I plan to order a few of each PCB and every part I can find to build up several different versions of each stage. I've also laid out the Preamp and Output amplifiers on two separate PCBs. I've started compiling a master bill of materials to collect all of the parts I've seen used in BA283 circuits. Phase 2 of this project is to build up some circuits and listen, listen, listen. Because of issues like these, I anticipate that sourcing will be the most challenging part of this project. So many classic albums featuring the 'Neve sound' would not have been recorded with the original caps. Like any other console, Neves must have their aluminum caps replaced every few years. However, Neve officially recommended BC107 and BC109 for repairs, which are arguably found in more classic consoles than the 'originals.' The same issue applies to capacitors. For example, the first BA283s used BC184C transistors. Various revisions and years of repairs also give rise to difficult questions about authenticity. And unfortunately, almost every part used in the originals is long obsolete. Because the circuits are so simple, every part matters. For a bit of perspective, the primitive 741 opamp contains 20 transistors. And both of these circuits contain only three transistors each. These two circuits are replicated dozens of times throughout a single console, making up the active parts of the mic preamp, equalizer, master section, etc. These building blocks are small amplifier boards with the prefix BA, for 'board amplifier.' The most ubiquitous, the BA283, contains two sections: a preamp and an output driver. While the 80-series consoles are large and complex, they're built from just a few simple building blocks. So, for this project I'll be focused on a very small sliver of Neve's 50+ year history.Ģ.

By the mid-70's Neve had switched to class-AB circuits and by the end of the 70's the consoles were all IC-based. These circuits are all discrete and class-A. The 80-series consoles of this era featured the preamp/EQ modules that have become famous like the 1073, 1081, and 1084 as well as the 1290 preamp and 1272 bus amplifier. All of the myriad Neve clones and Neve-inspired devices are based on a very small collection of circuits the early 1970's. There were three big takeaways from that crash course:ġ. He gave me a day long crash course, some of which happened live on our Live Q&A on Youtube (archive).

My first step was to invite my friend and Neve expert Jens Junkurth down from New York to school me on the circuitry. So my immediate goal is to learn as much as I can with the hope that it will eventually lead to me to a cool, unique idea for a Neve-inspired kit. The truth is I know very little about the Neve history and right now. There are already a lot of great 'British Console' projects out there from The Don Classics, Martin Adriaanse, and Audio Maintenance Limited, so I want to make sure that anything we do fits a niche not already filled by those folks. I know I want it to be something more unique than a straight clone. I emphasized ' some sort of Neve-inspired kit' above because I have no idea what it will be. Photo by Neve Sweden, from Wikimedia Commons The 10 preamp/equalizers and the 229 compressors are all console modules that have found a second life as plugins and pieces of standalone audio gear. And a whole cottage industry has emerged around cloning parts of these consoles to make the 'Neve sound' available for modern project studios that don't possess a console. Neve's vintage consoles (especially those of the 70's as we'll see later) are famous for their 'warm,' 'larger-than-life' sound. 'Neve' refers to a family of analog audio gear, either directly designed by or inspired by the designs of Rupert Neve. The project will be some sort of Neve-inspired kit, but that's all I know. I titled this post 'Mystery Project' because right now it's a mystery to me.

That means I'm going to share everything I learn as I go and I'll publish my design files under an open source Creative Commons Share-Alike license. I'm just beginning a new project and I thought I'd try something different this time: I'm going to make the entire design process public.

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