The AEA TRP 500 opened up a new world for me when recording a quiet, vintage felted upright—delivering remarkable detail not just in the room’s ambiance, but also in the intimate, close-mic'd textures. I'm currently using two different pairs of ribbon mics, and I genuinely wouldn’t record with ribbons without this preamp.
If there’s one minor downside, the knobs and buttons can feel a bit soft or imprecise—but that’s likely a trade-off of the compact 500-series format rather than a reflection of the unit’s performance.