The Crane Song Europa Mic Pre is a totally unique design concept in microphone preamplifier technology. After years of design to prototype to production, Crane Song feel the recording industry is ready to experience the feature-packed Europa One!
Included are the standard functions such as phase, phantom power, and instrument input. The microphone input has 3 input impedance choices which are 2.2K ohms for normal microphone operation, 300 ohms and a Hi-Z choice for different microphone sounds. The instrument input has an impedance of 1.2 Megohms which is ideal for guitars. The gain overall is adjustable in 1db steps from 0 to 66db on the mic input and 0 to 30 dB on the instrument input. Gain is displayed on a 2 digit led display. The low cut filter which is a 3 pole, 18db per octave has 8 frequencies 148 Hz, 130 Hz, 117 Hz, 100 Hz, 81 Hz, 63 Hz, 48 Hz, 33 Hz, and off.
Unique to the Europa pre-amp are 3 controls for changing the color of the pre-amp. The first control is a SPEED which changes how fast the pre-amp can respond. The control goes from 0 to 8 with 8 being the fastest rate, and 0 being very drastic. The even harmonic control provides 9 levels of color from 0 to 8, and the odd harmonic control which also has 9 levels color with the 0 setting being the cleanest in both cases. These three controls are a series analog process so that the even harmonic control affects the sound of the speed control and the odd harmonic control affects the sound of both the speed and even harmonic controls
All the controls; gain, speed, even harmonic, the odd harmonic controls are stepped which makes it easy to recall settings.
The level meter has a 0 VU reference point of (+4dbu) with one dB steps going to +20 dB above 0VU and to -25 dB below 0 VU with the steps being larger than 1 dB below -16 dB.
The maximum output level is +24 dBu balanced with the maximum balanced input level of +24 dBu at 0 dB of gain. This allows the Europa 1 pre-amp to be used in a mix environment for coloring.