Tierra Audio Flavour Preamp (Chilli)

Tierra Audio Flavour Preamp (Chilli)

The Tierra Audio Flavour Preamp, Chilli is a wild and aggressive all-analogue inline preamplifier, designed to send your electric guitar, vocals or percussion sound in overdrive.

Hand-crafted in Spain using audio-optimised components, the Chilli boasts an all-analogue circuit with a Lundahl input transformer that boosts your signals gain by a staggering +51dB to create crunchy and sharp even harmonic saturation.

Suitable for dynamic and passive ribbon microphones, the Tierra Audio Chilli is the perfect companion for vocalists, electric guitarists or drummers looking to add an over-the-top sonic flavour that brings energy and liveliness to your recordings.

Specification

• Boosted gain: +51 dB.
• Frequency filter: None
• Harmonic distortion: Crispy even harmonics and hard levels of compression
• Input transformer: Lundahl



Analogue microphone boosters with studio quality

Tierra Audio's Flavours Preamps are a collection of all-analogue inline microphone preamplifiers that will bring an extra dose of gain, texture and colour to your vocal and instrument recordings, as well as your live performances.  

Simply plug in your favourite microphone and start singing or playing your instrument: You'll be amazed with your "new sound"!

Thanks to the wide range of flavours offered, you can enjoy different gain levels: from an enhanced and crystalline sound, to different types and intensities of "sonic flavours", all specially designed to bring a unique character without losing a drop of musicality.

Some flavours are warm and subtle, whilst others are sharper, hotter, denser and more saturated. Others provide more definition, more grain, or even more 'crunch!'

Whatever your favourite flavour of mic pre, Tierra Audio's Flavours collection has something to spice up your input recording chain.

Handmade in Spain

Like all Tierra Audio products, the Flavours Preamps are handmade with tons of love in Madrid (Spain), with circuits and electronic components of the highest quality.

These products are the result of the joint efforts of engineers, musicians, designers, and producers to provide a full range of "portable flavours" that will enrich and nuance the sound of your microphones.

Each of these seven microphone preamplifiers works thanks to the phantom power (48V) of your audio interface or your mixing console, returning the boosted signal from your microphone.

This will improve the ability of your audio interface to pick up and manipulate the sound with the highest quality, solving some of the noise problems you may be experiencing with your microphone, and allowing you to use longer cables and providing an extra dose of colour depending on the flavour you have chosen.

Your creativity will rule as you record voices and instruments of all kinds!

Take them wherever you go

Ultra-compact and portable, the Tierra Audio Chilli is the perfect companion to the gigging musician.

Designed to fit in any case or gigbag, you can carry your signature flavour with you wherever you go without the need for any batteries or mains power thanks to the passive design.

Use it on stage, in the studio, during rehearsals, at home for your livestreams, or wherever you may be in the world.

Produce Like A Pro | A Whole Range of Preamps
From Tierra Audio's "Flavours"

What are the different flavours?

We have designed seven different flavours, offering a very versatile sound range to help you improve the sound of your lead voices, choirs, Spanish guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitar, bass amplifiers, and all kinds of string instruments such as violins, cellos or double basses, percussion instruments... In short, any voice or instrument that can be picked up by a microphone.

Each of the models offers a different gain level (all boosted), as well as a possible frequency filter (more or less bass, mid and/or treble) and a certain harmonic distortion (soft or hard), or even an improved but totally neutral sound, without additives.

Flavours Preamps are:

• Truffle
• Cocoa
• Mint
• Chilli
• Vanilla
• Pepper
• Salt

Comparison Sheet

Tierra Audio Flavours - Comparison Sheet (click to open in new tab)

Which Microphones can I use?

Flavours Preamps are specially designed for safe use with dynamic and passive ribbon microphones, as they are the microphones that usually generate the smaller signal and need the biggest sound boost.

For example:

Shure SM7B, Shure Beta 58A, Shure SM57, Shure SM58, ElectroVoice RE20, Beyerdynamic M69N, M130, M160, AEA R84, Coles 4038, Royer Labs Passive Ribbon Microphones, SE Electronics VR1 Voodoo, t.bone passive ribbon microphones, and others.

If you want to use the Flavours Preamps with condenser microphones or with active (phantom-powered) ribbon microphones, you will have to use an external phantom power source to feed your microphone.

By the way, USB microphones cannot be connected to the Flavours Preamps, only microphones connected via balanced audio cables with XLR connectors (male-female).

The output of Flavours Preamps is a boosted balanced microphone signal (output is not a line signal).



How do they work?

Tierra Audio's seven "sonic flavours" are born by passing the signal from your microphone through different 100% analogue electronic circuits that transform it in the entire frequency spectrum.

Just like when you look for a specific flavour while cooking your favorite dish, depending on the sound you want to obtain, these circuits are formed by different ingredients (electronic components of the highest quality), with which Tierra have built filters and amplification stages that fulfill very specialized tasks.

Also, five of the Flavours Preamps incorporate a crucial ingredient: a premium input transformer.

The transformer amplifies the signal by passing it through a copper winding around a metal core that excites the signal and gives it an extra dose of harmonics: pure colour and tasty sound.

Choosing a transformer is not an easy task. There are hundreds and hundreds of manufacturers, models, and features to try until you find the one which best fits the purpose, the flavour we are looking for.

Thanks to Tierra's extensive experience in the world of ProAudio, the company know and work with the best international brands of transformers. Therefore, Tierra have chosen to use models from prestigious brands such as Carnhill® (UK) and Lundahl® (Sweeden).

Each of the selected transformers is specially designed to provide even or odd harmonics to your sound, more or less saturation, amplification, colour, and even noise, and all in an incredibly musical way!