Can a mic preamp be used in guitar applications?

[bombtek]

Something along the lines of a Behringer Tube Ultragain T1953?

[Forrest]

NO! Are you kidding? Dude, the pre-amp police will beat the hell from you!

[DonP]

It might work and it might not.

[markD]

in my experience, it won't do what a guitar player thinks it will do. mic preamps don't have the gain saturation level that a guitar preamp does. about the nastiest i have ever been able to get one get gave me a muddy, flubby "distorted" sound. it was good for vintage style distortion, but i kinda thought it was sort of like cranking one of those old musicman HD amps....it got distorted, but a pedal got you there better. another example would be like using the shit-nasty distortion on the roland jc120.....

now, if you want to use it in the effects loop of a solid state amp to warm things up a bit, that seems to be okay. i have even use one in front of an old fender tube head in order to get a more "AM" radio type sound - something really "cardboard-y" - but it was for a specific type of tone in a recording situation.

i have never used the mic pre you are talking about. all the examples i have given and experiments i have tried are centered around an A designs MP-2A. my friend has one of those in his studio and he lets me borrow it to use in my studio. it's pretty cool and VERY usable in its appropriate application.

[Inazone]

A mic preamp might work as a boost, but it's not really the best tool for the job. It'll add more noise than anything. The only exception I've personally found to that is when the mic pre has an EQ. I tried an old ART Tube MP as a boost, and it added far too little tonal coloration for the level of noise it added. On the other hand, an ART Tube Channel (same basic preamp, but with a parametric EQ and compressor) sounded fantastic in the effects loop. However, the mic pre could actually be bypassed so that just the EQ was engaged.

[Endrik]

yes you can use it when you want a direct to the board sound, old Motown records had three guitars straight into board, into the same channel and in mono, some really funky stuff, or Mark Knopfler played some stuff into the board with Big Muff.... it would work for those kind of things

[Spivonious]

You can use it for recording, but it won't be the best solution. Microphone impedances are different than guitar impedances. In my experience, mic preamps make guitars sound very thin and compressed. And if you're after some preamp distortion, forget about it. Mic pres are not designed for pleasant overdrive.