Heritage Audio HA81A – Class-A 73-Style Mic Pre with 81-Style EQ Heritage Audio

The best of both worlds.
Introducing Heritage Audio’s HA-81A: a new mix of 2 classic console´s circuits.

The HA-81A Elite is a channel strip that combines an all discrete, Class-A 73-style mic preamp with an extremely versatile and musical console style equalizer — arguably the trick for obtaining instant classic sound for all recording engineers.

The mic preamp that meets the demands.
The HA-81A’s preamp section is an 80 dB, all discrete Class-A design with Carnhill/St. Ives input and output transformers, exactly the same one found in the other Elite Series modules.

The preamp features gain, output trim, -20db pad, polarity reverse, and +48v phantom power.

The best console´s style equalizer ever made.
The HA-81’s equalizer section is an exceptionally musical 4 band, inductor-based equalizer with high and low pass filters. Where 3 band equalizers such as the typical 73-style exceed at musicality but may get short of features, the HA-81A EQ equally excels on both. Extreme control over Shelf or Bell response curves on the high and lows, dual Q on both mid bands, with dedicated high and low mid ones, and a range of 40 frequency selections to choose from.

Hybrid design. Heritage quality.
The Heritage HA-81A utilizes only rotary switches and precision, concentric potentiometers. And like all of the products in our Elite range, the HA-81A is built with the most cutting edge methods in manufacturing and design, without ever  compromising audio quality or cutting corners — all at the Heritage headquarters in Spain.

Specifications

• Microphone input impedance: HI, 1200 Ohm minimum, LO, 300 Ohm minimum. Higher gain positions gradually have greater impedances, optimum for low gain ribbon mics. Input is transformer balanced and floating.
  • Line input impedance: 10KOhms bridging, transformer balanced and floating.
  • Output impedance: Less than 75 Ohms, transformer balanced and floating, to drive a load of 600 Ohms.
  • Maximum output: Greater than +26.5dBu into 600 Ohms (internally terminated)
  • THD: Less than 0.025% at 1Khz, Less than 0.05% at 100Hz.
  • Frequency response :20Hz (+0.3dB) to 20Khz (-0.2dB).EQ Off. For EQ ON frequency response please check the features section.
  • Maximum Gain: Slightly greater than 80dB.
  • Equivalent Input Noise: Less than -125dBu at 80dB mic gain.
• Output stage noise: Less than -100dBu.
  • Power consumption: Less than 150 mA @48VDC.