I’ve looked at a few Franklin Audio devices now, and they’ve all been impressive — practical problem‑solvers that do just enough different that they should be able to find their own niche in the pro audio market. They’re all designed and made in Australia, and everything I’ve seen to date has been housed in simple, robust and roadworthy boxes, whose white labels are easy to read against the black metalwork.
The latest Franklin device to make its way to me is their MP‑10, which is a mic preamp with a difference. Housed in a folded‑steel case with rubber feet, it would sit equally happily on a studio desktop, atop a keyboard, on a stage floor or on a pedalboard. On the top, there’s just one control: a chunky gain knob, whose large diameter and white position indicator line make it easy to make broad or fine adjustments. There’s no numerical scale for this (it ranges from Min to Max), but the specs quote a maximum gain of 60dB, and there’s a dotted circle to help with setting/recall. (If using it for regular gigs, I’d consider marking a go‑to gain position somehow.) The only other features on the top panel are LEDs that confirm the required 9V DC power is present, indicate whether it’s supplying the mic with 48V phantom power, and act as a basic output level meter.
Franklin Audio MP-10 rear panel.
On the back you’ll find the inlet for a guitar‑pedal‑style 9V centre‑negative DC power. I couldn’t find any specs regarding the current draw (I wish manufacturers would put this on every unit!) but Franklin sell a suitable 1A model, and my pedalboard PSU’s 300mA supply did the job too. A grey button applies 48V phantom to the Neutrik XLR mic input socket — you can use any standard passive or active mics with this box. A TS jack provides the instrument‑level output, via which you can feed the signal to any guitar pedal or amp, and there’s a second XLR that provides a thru feed. This opens up a few possibilities, such as capturing a clean ‘safety’ recording of the mic signal along with the effected sound, and splitting the signal to give you both wet and dry feeds for a FOH console when playing live. Finally on the back is another grey button to engage a pad, while on the front two more buttons invert the signal polarity and provide a ground lift.
I have no noise or distortion specs to offer, but subjectively this is a lovely, clean‑sounding little preamp, with plenty of gain for any scenario in which you’d realistically want to use pedals or amps.
The simplicity and immediacy of patching a microphone into the MP‑10 and the MP‑10 into my pedal chain encouraged me to experiment...
I already have and use various combinations of preamps, re‑amp and DI boxes and so forth, and often use the mic input of my Boss RC‑600 looper system to get mic signals onto my pedalboard. This Franklin box sounds cleaner than the RC‑600, and takes up way less space on a pedalboard to boot. And while my current ‘multi‑box’ approach may be fine in the studio, it’s a bit messy and fiddly. The simplicity and immediacy of patching a microphone into the MP‑10 and the MP‑10 into my pedal chain encouraged me to experiment much more; it’s so much less hassle when you want to create an ad hoc or portable setup. That it’s happy running off my pedalboard PSU adds to the convenience.
The MP‑10 isn’t the first box to solve this problem. Eventide’s Mixing Link springs to mind, for example. But it does the job well, it’s robust and it’s portable. The price isn’t bad either. So, if you want to run a mic through your amp or pedals, the MP‑10 makes it easy to do that.
Information
$259