PreSonus has unveiled the RC 500, a top-of-the-line channel strip for professional recording and ‘reminiscent of classic, vintage solid-state preamp designs’.

The newest member of the PreSonus family of preamps/processors, the RC 500 was designed by Robert Creel (RC), who also designed the PreSonus XMax preamp, the ADL 700, and other PreSonus analogue circuits.

The design features a class-A hybrid input stage with discrete transistors and the latest-generation, low-distortion operational amplifiers. The design maintains the sonic qualities of class-A and benefits from the repeatability in performance of the operational amplifier.

It als o offers 48V phantom power, polarity invert and a -20dB pad, in addition to a 12dB/octave high-pass filter set at 80Hz. A FET compressor complements the solid-state preamp. Controls include fully attack (0.5-10ms), release (30-500ms) and threshold (-25/+20dBu), as well as hardware bypass. Ratio is fixed at 3:1.

The three-band semi-parametric EQ combines isolated filters and optimised, per-band Q. All bands have gain (±16dB) and frequency controls, with overlapping frequency ranges between the mid and high bands and fixed Q (0.5). The low and high bands are switchable between shelving and peak. Both compressor and EQ sections feature a relay bypass.

Rear-panel XLR mic and line inputs (with front-panel Input Select switch) and a front-panel quarter-inch TS instrument input accept a variety of sound sources. Dual-mode analogue vu metering enables monitoring of output and gain-reduction levels. A master level control adjusts the overall output from -80dB to +10dB.