Radial Engineering is shipping the Jensen Twin-Servo 500 Series preamplifier.
The Twin-Servo is a remake of the 990 preamp and is able to deliver up to 60dB of gain. It features a front-panel Neutrik Combo connector with choice of XLR and ¼” inputs, a dual-gang potentiometer for level adjustment along with a 10 segment LED meter for viewing. This is supplemented with a 180°polarity reverse switch that toggles the absolute phase, a high-pass filter to eliminate excessive resonance, a -15dB pad, and a 48V phantom power activation switch.
It is made with all-steel construction, powder-coat finish, a fully enclosed back box and dual-sided gold contacts for positive connection to the 500 series back plane.
Jensen’s Chief Technology Officer, Bill Whitlock, said: “When Deane Jensen first put his mind to building the finest microphone amplifier possible, the development process began with the now famous 990 op-amp. Part of the magic was maximising the gain-margin so that no matter what the input, the lowest possible distortion would be realised. The unique design essentially cruises along in Class-A mode and then transitions to Class- AB only when pushed to extremes. In order to eliminate phase shift, all capacitors were removed from the signal path and replaced with servos.
“The ‘unlimited bandwidth’ enables the design to reproduce signals from DC to light. He then added two of Jensen’s most robust transformers to the sauce in order to eliminate DC coupling noise and provide the necessary drive for long cables. The end design incorporates two 990 op-amps cascaded in series, two servos and two Jensen transformers, thus culminating in the Twin-Servo name. One listen and you will immediately hear a bottom end response like no other with a smooth, natural rendering that extends from 0.2Hz to 150kHz. Working with the Radial design team, the Jensen Twin-Servo 500 has been faithfully reproduced following Deane’s original recipe and has been adapted to fit the 500 series format.”
It will retail for $999.99.
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