Catalinbread, known for its many innovative pedals, has just unveiled its new preamp, the Crooner! It faithfully recreates the RCA BA-31 studio console preamp, which enjoyed immense popularity in its day, in a compact format that fits easily on your pedalboard. With it, you can effortlessly produce the rich low end and surprisingly clear, smooth sound characteristic of classic recordings right at your feet. The input stage features a UREI-style discrete op-amp with a wide dynamic range, drawing on the design philosophy behind the company’s Airstrip. This allows the unit to cover every type of distortion, from beautiful clean boosts and preamp tones to rich, sticky saturation, overdrive, and even intense fuzz, all with a single pedal. It is also equipped with controls that enable intuitive yet deep tone shaping, such as the Push knob for subtle gain adjustment and the Trim control, which boosts the gain of the BA-31 circuit itself to add the pleasing compression characteristic of transformers. It supports power supplies ranging from 9V to 18V, allowing you to enjoy a rich variety of headroom depending on the voltage.

The Crooner combines studio-quality, exquisite tone with an astonishingly diverse range of distortion characters. Be sure to check out this cutting-edge preamp that will take your pedalboard to the next level!

CATALINBREAD / Crooner