This is just a teaser as the unit hasn't arrived yet, but I finally unloaded a bunch of old gear, and now have a DAV Electronics Broadhurst Gardens No. 1 mic preamp* on order. Built in England, by one of the designers that built consoles and electronics for Decca Record's studio, it is, apparently, the dog's bollocks. My main preamp at the studio is a Chandler Limited dual vintage Neve unit. It sounds great, but it can be too colored and aggressive-sounding, especially on delicate things like vocals, or when recording a lot of stacked elements with it. I've been searching for something that still sounds sweet and adds life to a signal, but with a clearer frequency response and less grit. I think I may have found it.

A couple of details: The BG1 allows the summing of both mic signals into one output, which is cool. It also has metering, which none of my other boxes have, and a variable high-pass filter per channel. Plus, it looks like you could probably bludgeon a giraffe into submission with it, (if the situation were life-and-death) and then turn around and use it to record a nice clear tympani track.

Thank GOD for the (comparatively) weak UKP!

Edit: I've taken delivery of this marvelous little device, and put it through its paces.  Initially, I approached it much like I did my beloved Neve.  Sending big crunchy signals through it, jacking the gain, etc.  I wasn't pleased with the results- metallic, non-euphonic, unfriendly.

When I finally thought to treat it like the classical music recording device it was designed to be, and baby it a little, I got stellar results.  Silky vocals, shining acoustic guitars, and even meaty drums, so long as I took care not to push the box where it wasn't meant to go.  I love this thing.

*To non-audio nerd readers, a microphone preamp is a device that boosts a mic's signal to the point where it is loud enough to record correctly. It sounds like a pretty unimportant thing, but mic signals are very quiet, often needing to be made thousands of times stronger to be recorded. Because of the delicacy of doing that massive amplification, mic pres are one of the biggest factors in getting good sound.