preamp advice

[pepsi_max2k]

hi, i came here last year looking for preamp / battery box advice, found greenmachines thread, tried to make one but it all went horribly wrong so...

now i'm trying to get hold of a pre-made preamp or battery box. basically i wanna use my little stereo lapel mic > line-in of an archos gmini400 to record live gigs ranging from quiter acoustic stuff to loud rock concerts. obviously on it's own it barely works due to no power, but i'm still not sure whether i should be going for pre-amp or battery box. i also don't wanna spend very much at all (no more than around £20, $50) otherwise i may as well just get a 2nd hand minidisc (which i did have, until it broke ).

most people here seem to suggest a battery box would be better for loud stuff, but it would still be nice to have some kinda volume for whenever i'm recording quiter stuff.

so, i'm wondering how much worse a pre-amp could be. when recording with minidisc i always stuck the mic straight in to the mic-in (so in to the md's preamp), adjusted sound levels on the md and everything was fine. the only suitable preamp i've found on ebay is this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...p;rd=1&rd=1

though i've no idea what kinda quality it is (anyone care to enlighten me?). but it has an inbuilt gain control which i'd assume would help to quiten down any really loud recordings along with the gmini's inbuild recording volume leveler. another thing is i've heard the battery voltage has an effect on the mic's quality, and this thing comes with a 12v one which seems pretty good.

if someone could let me know if that preamp looks suitable for middling noise level pub and club gigs, or if there's a really good reason to not be using a pre-amp at all, or even if you have one you wanna sell for around £20 or less, then that'd be great.

thanks.

ps. is green machine still around / selling battery boxes? his site doesn't seem to list any and can't find anything on ebay.

Edited May 10, 2007 by pepsi_max2k

[boojum]

GM is still around and still has his plans out there for anyone to build a BB. PM him to see if he will build you one. I have electret condenser mics which work just fine with a 6 volt battery box feeding the line-in on my MZ-RH1. As a matter of fact, I have to apply a 20dB cut to record amp'ed music without overloading on the vocals. And that is feeding line-in with some Soundman OKM II's. I will be trying the BB with some AT's tomorrow night. It should work just fine. If it does not, I'll let all of you know.

Cheers