MPA GOLD Mic Preamp Repair - thank you ART

May 03, 2020

A friend asked me to fix his ART MPA Gold Dual Mic Preamp. It's really nice to be able to dish out a fat spoonful of audio-praise to ART, who were ultra-helpful in helping me get this repair done.

The ART MPA Gold dual preamp is a hybrid valve/transistor affair with very good specs and some nice extra features such as variable input impedance and a tunable low cut filter.

The unit had some instability at high gain. The issue turned out to be a dual potentiometer, which I was unable to source from the usual component suppliers. So I sent an email to ART via their site.

Well, to cut a long story short, ART came back to me fairly quickly, and their Sales Manager, Steve Hendee made sure I got the parts I needed quickly and very inexpensively (in fact I think they eventually just sent them as it was just too much hassle to send a small international amount).

The fact that the product has not been made for some years, and that there was no profit at all in dealing with this request didn't seem to worry them. They are clearly a service-oriented company, who care about their customers even after they made their profit. I take my hat off to them.

Oh, and the ART MPA Gold is a pretty nice pre, if you happen to come across one.