Brook Audio | Company
Brook Audio
Phone: +61 404 092 382
Reviews
to load big map
23.01.2022 The Transformation of an Electric Bass Guitar This year I became a bass player again and needed to get a good instrument. I had the choice of going back to my comfort zone and looking for an old Fender or similar, or creating something new. The second choice appealed to me because as I was reinventing myself as a bass player, why not reinvent the instrument too? If I could buy an instrument that had good construction and acoustic properties I could deal with the electronics m...Continue reading
21.01.2022 Rebirth of a bass guitar amplifier. Off to Melbourne this week with the Isaiah B Brunt trio and it is time to retire my trusty old Delbrook bass head that has provided my signature sound for more than forty years. At 150 watts the old amp sounded louder and punchier than other amps of similar power, and also had warmth and definition that made it an ideal amp for the vast majority of gigs. ... With air flights in the future plans, a reduction in size and weight is imperative. What if I could make it small enough to fit in a back-pack, or even the instrument case? What if I could do that and also retain the tone that has all but disappeared from modern amplifiers? This is not a simple circuit, using a pair of bridged power amps, but with three-dimensional thinking and computer aided drawing, the space it fits into can be vastly reduced. A standard die-cast box forms the chassis, and a pair of heat-sinks are bolted to the sides, to remove the heat from inside. Keeping heat to a minimum has been a major concern, and so stabilizing the output stage quiescent currents, always an issue in class A/B amplifiers, has received particular attention. The solution is over-the-top but each transistor in each output stage has it's own closely coupled transistor-diode; that is a total of ten temperature sensors, so that the biasing quickly and precisely responds to the specific temperature rise of each individual transistor. . Result is the amp barely gets warm even when driven hard, and the sound quality never suffers after a loud passage, as many other amps do. The 160VA toroidal transformer and big cluster of capacitors store a deceptively high amount of energy, and the output is a chunky 100 watts. The front end is constructed on a hand-made PCB mother board which mounts all the hardware, so it can be installed as a self-contained unit. This unit has the advantages of more than forty years of hind-sight and perspective about what is and is not important in an amplifier that will be used by a professional player, seeking a musical result. The extra 10% of refinement now possible from SPICE computer simulation, and adapting the original circuitry to what has proven to sound the best, has proven more than subtle to the ear. The amp has a smoother, more round sound than before, and a fatter bottom end, without sacrificing definition. This is SO much more than a miniature amplifier!
17.01.2022 BROOK TubeDI - The world's best Bass direct injection box. Secret weapon of leading professional bass players. Still in production.
17.01.2022 A high end microphone preamplifier does more than just increase signal level without distortion. It conveys the finest nuances of sound and transports the listener to the event. A really fine preamp also brings out the ambience of the room, something many lesser units fail to fully capture. ... The BROOK MP series preamps have punched above their weight for decades. They have provided quality sound for music recording, television and motion pictures, many times out-performing the big names. When I was asked to make a single channel unit for a home recording setup, the biggest challenge lay in the power supply. Three rails of super-quiet, double-regulated DC is usually large, costly and heat-producing. The answer lay in a custom plug-pack. Do not be fooled by the small size. This is a high performance linear supply. Now the preamp can be housed in a small metal box, far away from the magnetic field of the power transformer. An elegant solution.
10.01.2022 Brook NS10AMP still rules 25 years later. When the NS10AMP was first released in 1993 Sydney's music studios en masse replaced their near-field monitor power amplifiers. The improvements in clarity and imaging were more than subtle and made Yamaha NS10 speakers a pleasure to listen to; no small feat. Similarly, when driving headphone systems, the improvement was staggering.... Many were used to drive main monitor systems where the 100 watt/channel rating gave little clue of the solid power delivery. Still in production after all these years.
02.01.2022 My new bass head. Replaces a forty-year old classic at a quarter the size and half the weight and approaches the same power. The sound is better than any head I have previously made or heard.
