Sonic Farm Silkworm

Sonic Farm Silkworm is a pre-amp for the 500 series, manufactured by Sonic Farm.

History
The Sonic Farm Silkworm was released in 2013.

Official description
Silkworm is our first series 500 product, and it took a long time to develop it. That’s because series 500, with its inherent limitations, like available space, low supply voltage, low available current draw, etc, requires a meticulous design.

If you are looking for a superior performance solid state preamp in series 500 format that covers all applications in a professional recording studio, look no further. This is your ticket. We are very proud of Silkworm’s tone, versatility and reliability. It is amongst the finest this series has to offer, and that it does in truckloads.

Of course, we wanted to pack this baby with as much tonal variation as possible:

Mic input has a 3-position character (labeled “vibe”) switch, giving you three distinctively different and very useable tonalities. The output also has a split personality, solid state or transformer driven.

Thanks to the dual stage servo loop, there are no capacitors in the signal path from input to output. This yields a linear phase low end which is not achievable with tube preamps or conventionally designed solid-state ones. When used with a good quality microphone (or instrument), the effortless and open low end is immediately noticeable.

When in transformer mode, Silkworm sounds just like Neve 1073LB. This was not intended, it just happened; it has a completely different design approach. In solid state mode, it becomes extremely transparent, resulting in stunning realism. Solid state mode preserves clarity even when extreme equalization is applied. Input transformer assures that the tone is never sterile even at cleanest settings.

Short Silkworm Specs:
 * Fully discrete gain stage
 * Full DC path, no coupling capacitors
 * Servo control for minimal DC offset
 * Maximum gain 66dB (mic) and 42dB (instrument)
 * Maximum output level: 28.7dBu
 * Cinemag input mic transformer
 * Cinemag 100% Fe output transformer
 * Switchable transformer or solid state balanced output
 * 3-way character (vibe) switch
 * Gain regulation twofold: 3-pos range switch and trim control
 * Mic input impedance: variable (see manual)
 * Instrument input impedance: 2.2MOhm