Warm Audio WA73 1073 Style Single Channel Microphone Preamp
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Earn rewards every time you shop at AMS. You'll collect points on eligible purchases that turn into promotional savings on future gear, with points typically available several days after your order ships. All you need is a free AMS account — no credit card, financing, or payment plan required.
The more you shop, the more you earn. Create a free account and start earning from your very first eligible purchase. Rewards are applied as a discount on future eligible purchases.
Earn points on eligible purchases with AMS Rewards and turn them into savings on future orders, no credit card required. You can apply points at checkout once they’re available.
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0% Interest
Payment Plan
Don’t sell your soul to a creditor to get the gear you need. At AMS, we want to lower the barriers to create. That’s why we offer in-house 0% financing, and you don’t even have to open a new line of credit! Spread out payments on your credit card to simplify financing and avoid hefty late fees or service charges. Cost shouldn’t interfere with your creativity.
Warm Audio WA73 1073 Style Single Channel Microphone Preamp
The Warm Audio WA73 is more than just a piece of gear — it’s a portal to the golden era of British pop and rock recording. It faithfully recreates the rich, iconic sound of the legendary 1073 preamp, a staple of hit records for over 50 years, at an accessible price. Whether you’re after vintage warmth or a reliable channel strip with exceptional sound quality, the WA73 delivers with clarity and style.
A British Invasion for Your Rack
The WA73 doesn't just pay lip service to the classics — it's obsessed with them. Warm Audio meticulously reverse-engineered the original 1073 preamp to ensure this unit sings with the same rich, classic tone that engineers have coveted for decades.
UK Custom Carnhill Transformers: The secret sauce of the 1073 sound is its iron. Warm Audio teamed up with Carnhill Transformers in Cambridgeshire to load the WA73 with faithful replicas of the original Marinair Radar transformers. This ensures that when you crank the gain, it saturates more beautifully than a biscuit in tea.
Tone Button: Think of this as your "instant vibe" switch. Pressing the TONE button changes the input transformer's impedance, letting you flip between the classic console sound and a more open, modern tone. It’s like getting two preamps for the price of one.
Vintage Capacitors: To keep things authentic, the signal path is loaded with tantalum and polystyrene capacitors. It's a small detail, but it’s the difference between real sugar and corn syrup — it makes the high-end smoother and the overall sound much more faithful to the original design.
Hand-Built for Vintage Warmth
In a world of mass-produced circuit boards, the WA73 takes the road less traveled. It turns out that a huge part of that classic "mojo" comes from the construction method, so Warm Audio decided to do it the old-fashioned way — by hand.
Hand Wired & Assembled: Robots are great for doing the robot dance, but they lack the soul needed for vintage audio. The WA73 is authentically hand-wired and assembled, including the PCB components, mimicking the construction that gave the original units their legendary durability and tone.
80dB of Gain: This preamp has enough juice to power a small city — or at least your quietest ribbon microphone. With 80dB of gain on tap, you can capture quiet sources with absolute clarity or drive the input hard to get that thick, harmonic grit.
Fully Discrete Signal Path: There are no integrated circuits hiding in here to ruin the party. The fully discrete design ensures the signal remains pure and uncolored by cheap components, delivering a sound that’s big, bold, and professional.
The Ultimate Studio Workhorse
This is the piece of gear you’d take to a desert island (assuming the island had power outlets and a drum kit). It’s versatile enough to handle anything you throw at it, making it a "one-stop-shop" for engineers who need reliability across a variety of sources.
Inductor Based Hi-Pass Filter: Mud is great for spas, but terrible for mixes. The 4-position high-pass filter (50, 80, 160, 300 Hz) lets you sculpt your low end before it even hits the converter, saving you headroom and headaches later in the mix.
Smart I/O Options: Whether you’re plugging in a microphone via XLR, a synthesizer via Line Level TRS, or a bass directly into the front panel Instrument Input, the WA73 is ready to rock. It even features insert jacks so you can loop in your favorite compressor or EQ.
Output Control: Get all the vintage grit without the ear-splitting volume. The output control lets you crank the input gain for rich transformer saturation, while simultaneously dialing back the output so you don't clip your interface.
A Legend Reborn
The Warm Audio WA73 proves that you don't need a time machine (or a trust fund) to get the sound of audio history. It captures the spirit, the build quality, and most importantly, the sound of the most celebrated preamp in the world, making it a no-brainer for anyone looking to upgrade their front end.
Warm Audio WA73 Features:
Single Channel, Class A, 1073-Style British Microphone Preamp
UK Made Carnhill Transformers
80db Of Gain - Resistor Stepped Gain Switch
TONE Button - Changes Input Transformer Impedance for Varying Tone
48V Phantom Power
4 Position Inductor Based HI pass Filter - 50, 80, 160, 300 Hz