Intuitive piece. Substantially built. A lot of control within the parameters. Would recommend.

I’ve had this for a little while now. I’ve used in on many sources and it sounds great.

Lives on my two buss currently.

Can't say enough about Mogami They truly speak for themselves.The best for sound reproduction.

I've owned a lauten audio eden and a manley ref c for several years. Each of which have their own. Character and voice.
The upton 251 is definitely a mic in its own lane.
The sound of the upton is smoother, less harsh and detailed that the other mics I own are not.
I can honestly say that the upton is probably my most liked mic.
I find myself reaching for it 1st when I have an artist come by to lay down vocals. It's definitely worth the purchase.
Great mic!

These are great for amp miking and super versatile with a short boom arm! Stays put!

Absolutely everything I hoped it would be and more!

Since most of my connection to music over the past 15 years has been as some dude who plays guitar and doesn't have money to explore the world of musical equipment more deeply, my experience with high quality mic preamps and DI's is basically zero, but I think I know good sound when I hear it. I've been building a home hybrid music studio over the past year, and the time came to have at least a decent mic pre for recording vocals and acoustic guitars. As an afterthought, I figured it should have a decent DI because otherwise I'm using the DI in my little PreSonus audio interface for recording electric guitars, and the sound there just isn't cutting it.

So, I had a paltry budget and basically the only thing that people seemed to universally praise that I could afford was the DRS-1R: dude, the stars aligned on this one.

First, compared to the mic preamps in a budget audio interface and a budget mixer, there is just, like, no comparison. After hearing my terrible voice through this thing, I'm not sure I could stand to hear my voice through my cheap (though totally functional) mixer preamps. I was previously unaware that a difference like THAT existed, but here we are. I can't compare it to other preamps on the market and have no experience to do so, so take the above with a grain of salt, but I really like how this thing sounds. Sending drum machines through the line level input of the mic pre and experimenting with ratios of input and output gain can get into sound design territory, same for synthesizers.

I'm convinced the DI must be the best DI for electric guitar on the market. This is pure mysticism on my part since I have no point of reference, but a strat into the DI into some quality amp/cab simulation software is producing tones that are blowing my mind. Turning the output knob up produces some really obvious (transformer probably?) saturation that sounds, and even more feels, so gooey and soft. It is a shame there's not a pad that comes after the output because this thing has non-trivial amounts of headroom, so gain staging is very important. Anyway, I would understand anyone who bought this thing only for the DI (though maybe Phoenix Audio has a module for that?), it's that good (again, coming from a novice...)

Some purchases you look back on and aren't exactly certain why you made them in the first place, I can't imagine this one being one of them. I love this thing.

PROS: Just a really nice, full, and extremely open sounding mic preamp. A DI that is of disturbingly high quality on electric guitars. Excellent build quality.

CONS: There's no pad, and this thing will redline the input stage next in line extremely easily. This can be used creatively, but it'd be much easier to manage with a pad (perhaps I'm an idiot and what I'm proposing isn't possible, in which case this isn't a con). When using the mic pre, a pad isn't strictly necessary since you have input and output gain, but the DI only passes through the output stage so this doesn't work in general. This is the only negative thing I currently have to say about it, and it's far from a deal breaker.

Excellent speakers all the way!

perfect drum overheads

Excellent tube mic for literally all uses. One cannot find a better investment, too.

Nice build, super clean, very well designed.

I use this on everything. Brings everything forward. If you have a distressor or 1176 before hitting this then you have debatably the best compression chain for vocals in modern recording. Listen to everything become 3 dimensional.

Outstanding, worked out of the box…love the seamless integration. Thanks Vintage King!

Loving the card but, more importantly I’m impressed with the attention to detail by Eric Brody! He is incredibly thorough and he makes sure the customer has the info necessary to make an educated decision. So refreshing!

I have had the privilege to run FOH at several venues as this year. Have used the M80 on many talented vocalist this year, at large events. A definite step up from your industry standard microphones. Build quality is excellent. It did not disappoint!!!

Dope!!!

Excellent!

Nice upgrade from the Orion Studio Rev. 2017. The synergy core is more stable and easier to use, support from Antelope over the past few years has also improved.

Cant go wrong with 3 selections of sound.

Hands down the best 500 series fet comp out there.