Soyuz Microphones: Lakeside Mic Preamp

In a climate where it sometimes seems like a race to the bottom, with companies trying to build the cheapest audio outboard equipment they can, it’s refreshing to come across gear like Soyuz’s new Lakeside. A single channel preamp in one rack space, with an internal power supply, XLR I/O, and a 1/4-inch DI input, this unit is not pretending to be anything from the past. Knobs control Gain (stepped 10 to 60 dB in increments of 5 dB), a stepped 10-position high-pass filter (40 to 330 Hz), plus Output attenuation. Switches for polarity, DI enable, and phantom power finish off the clean, cream-colored faceplate. The 0 (unity) mark on the Output is one of the few mic preamp output controls that clearly states how the gain structure is set up. Think of a console L/R output fader that hits unity at the top and, from there, only reduces the output level. I cannot believe how vague most preamp outputs are about what exactly the output controls do! (“Is it a secondary gain stage? Where is unity?”) There’s no “Soyuz” product name on the faceplate; instead, we get a “????” badge. It turns out that’s Soyuz in Cyrillic, as this preamp is made in Tula, Russia. It’s an incredibly solid build, with thick metal housing, pro switches, and a smooth Output potentiometer. I opened the Lakeside up and inside found a solid state, discrete, transistor-based amplifier circuit with custom input and output transformers. Soyuz is known as a microphone company. Why build a preamp? Soyuz told me “After years of hearing the question, ‘What preamp do you recommend to use with your mics?’ we finally decided to make our own.” Savvy move! This preamp ticks all the boxes that indicate decent gear, so I put it to work.

When tracking a rock band live, the snare mic’s preamp can become my crucial make-or-break point of a good recording. I patched the Lakeside in after a TELEFUNKEN M80-SH mic on a decent (but not expensive) snare that was sounding good in Jackpot!’s live room. At 30 dB of Gain, with no HPF (high-pass filter) and the Output set to unity, we immediately had a great snare tone. I tracked with and without a compressor for my testing, and in both instances it sounded perfect with no EQ. The thwack, bite, and thud of a useable snare sound came through, and the drummer was quite happy. We began doing vocals with a very quiet female singer via a TELEFUNKEN Elektroakustik U47 (this mic has more output level than my other U 47 clones). I started with a tube channel strip that almost always gives smooth and useable results, but in this case it felt a little wispy. Patching into the Lakeside, I cranked the Gain all the way up, set the HPF to 70 Hz, sent it into a Retro Instruments 176 [Tape Op #66] compressor, and away we went. It was a lot of Gain (and a lot of reduction with the 176), but it never felt distorted. Actually, it made the vocal sound way more exciting. The singer got way more into performances, and special takes came down the pike! When the session was over, I overdubbed some bass through the Lakeside’s DI input. The Gain at 35 dB was perfect, but I forgot to flatten out the HPF from the vocal takes. It didn’t matter – the tone was fine. Sometimes, it’s okay to remove lows from a bass guitar! We were going to add some acoustic guitars but ran out of time, as I did want to hear my Soyuz 013 FET mic [#139] through this preamp!

There’s something a bit different going on inside the gain structure of the Lakeside than most solid-state preamps I have used. It seems to develop a type of self-limiting in a musical way. A source such as a snare drum, which frequently needs to have a pad switched in to keep the preamp from distorting, actually had me turning up the Gain a bit, yet it sounded perfect. My guess is that the stepped Gain engages different layers of gain circuits as one turns it up – a type of preamp circuit design I’ve heard of but am not sure which products actually utilize, but the number of transistors I see inside might be a clue. I thought I was hallucinating all this until Chris Koltay, using the Lakeside at his High Bias Recordings in Detroit, under no prompting, texted me with the same exact same thoughts and later wrote this up for us:

“The ability to make high art while staying true to your vision and integrity demands knowing who you are and what you do. The folks at Soyuz figured this out from inception. The common parts being flattering-yet-accurate capture, bulletproof craftsmanship, and an austere-yet-gorgeous aesthetic, all delivered with handmade precision that’s as charming as it is exact. To understand the Lakeside, I got right to it, recording guitar overdubs for local shit disturbers Prostitute. Their music is at once bombastic and danceable, always teetering on an edge without going over, and the guitars are harsh and abrasive at times. I mic’d up our Vox AC30 [guitar amp] with two Lombardi LM2060 dynamic mics, each positioned perpendicular a half inch off the grill, maybe an inch and a half outside the cone on each side – the resulting tracks present as ‘dual mono’ when panned but move in the stereo field slightly. I could push the Gain of the preamps when needed via the 5 dB stepped input and dial it back with the Output. Cleaner guitars got some grit this way, and the heavier tones were smoothed considerably while losing no size or depth. The proximity of the LM2060 gave plentiful low end and was easily tamed by the HPF in the Lakeside. I could be totally wrong, but the stepped positions on the input gain seemed to vary tonally ever so slightly, and I’d swear the same for the HPF. I’d switch from 90 Hz to 120 Hz and feel the mids shift. The 90 Hz position seemed to pull a half dB or so of 500 Hz out, whereas the 120 Hz had it back to flat. This phenomenon is nothing new, and while no ‘surgical’ preamp does this, I found it to be pleasing and useful. To my delight, this tracked identically across the two preamps. The Lakeside is infinitely useful in the tone-farming zone, making this type of wild source material easier to place when mixing, especially when stacking tracks.

Echopark Guitars moved here from Los Angeles a few years back, and High Bias has become home to much of the brand’s content generation. We formed a band with Echopark owner Gabriel Currie and Red Panda pedal builder Randy Molina to track some of Gabe’s jams as promo for the brand, but also for fun. We generally build tracks off the floor and replace parts as needed. The Lakeside was killing on the snare, with the same Lombardi LM2060 placed where I would put a Shure SM57. Again, the heft from the LM2060 on the rim of a Ludwig Supraphonic [snare drum] was welcomed but easily tamed. The gain structure flexibility proved useful here, as Gabe likes a little crunch on the snare. I easily dialed to his taste, and the sound was leveled and smoothed in a subtle yet effective way. In a word, it sounded ‘finished.’ Adam Macias played bass on the track, and I ran the bass direct through one Lakeside via the DI and ran an Electro-Voice RE20 on an Ampeg B15 amp through the other preamp. Both hit a pair of Universal Audio 1176 compressors on the way in. I hit the Lakesides pretty hard, again taming with the Output. Upon seeing my input Gain adjustments reflected in the VU meter of the 1176s, I realized when I was hitting the preamps hard, I was getting what looked like clipping on the meter, but it sounded immense in the track. The tracks required less 1176 on the way in than usual, and only slight bus compression in the mix. Guitars for this track were achieved by yours truly, using a 1973 Fender Telecaster Deluxe with the same AC30 rig and placement as above but swapping the LM2060s for a Soyuz 1973 [Tape Op #154] and an Ohma condenser. These are both exceptional mics but fairly different, to say the least. That said, matching the gain and tonal difference was a breeze by using creative gain structure and the high-pass filter. The tone was again sporting a finished quality that all the Soyuz gear seems to impart. If you’re looking for a preamp with vibe when you need it, honest sonics when you don’t, and one that punches way above its price point, Lakeside is for you. It fills a much-needed void between budget-minded preamps and upper-echelon competitors while totally breathing the air on their level.”

Thanks, Chris! It’s rare that us jaded engineers get excited about a new product this quickly. We’re not YouTube shills getting paid to act like they tried out some new plug-in and pretending to know what they’re talking about. We’re people making real records with cool musicians. If that doesn’t explain what an impressive preamp the Lakeside turned out to be, I don’t know what else to tell you. As Chris told me, “If you record guitars, go buy this preamp.”