Greg Hanks Design

Better living thru Handcrafted Technology
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Me.. 
I am NOT:
Greg Hanks of Rushmore MN A-1 Personal Safety
Greg Hanks the Gamer..
 
I am the guy who:
in the late 60's worked and played in the San Francisco recording and concert scene. In the early 70's was a partner in 'Audio Fantasy' a radio production company.. then went to work in the record industry. Places that hosted my particular brand of insanity include;
 
 
 

 Bushnell electronics

(The console manufacturer)

United Western

Recording Studios

Sound Labs

Elektra Asylum Records
ABC Dunhill RecordsThe Village RecorderThe Record Plant  Wally Heider Recording 
Longview Farms Recording StudiosSound Design / Media RecordingAudioTechniques New York Technical Support, LTD 
(I should admit that I founded New York Technical Support, a company that provided consultation to professional audio and video facilities throughout the world from 1983 to 1994)
History of the BA-660 
I found myself tiring of the support role and went back to my first love, which was electronic design.
 
In my experience, I discovered that most mic pre's limited (Some 'soft' and most 'hard') the microphone signal. I wanted to fix that... So I designed a tube preamp that had enough headroom to accommodate signals from a slight whisper to a loud roar.
 
But there was a problem...
Now we had an amplified signal whose dynamic range smoked the following equipment!
 
So I designed a compressor to follow it, added some controls and beast was in it's infancy..
 
DBX approached me to license the design, and I engaged some buddies (the Team) to help and the DBX 1650 was born. We designed and built a couple of proof of concept units, developed the packaging, the Bill of Materials etc... and had a little falling out over $$$ (Root of all evil..;-)
 
We parted ways, the DBX 1650 was rebranded, reworked a little (LOT!) and the BA-660 was born.
 
Sweetwater provided some seed money, Concord electronics provided some more and we made 32 of them.
 
Maybe you would like to get one? Show Me More!
What some of the users have to say about the unit.
 
"Fletcher"
The BA-660 is one of the finest sounding units I have ever used in my life... if you have an opportunity to snag one, jump on it [or pass the information on to me so I can snag it]
 
The BA-660... its just too cool and flexible for words alone to able to describe it... I will warn you that it will lead directly to the purchase of stuff from Thermionic Culture, InnerTUBE, and a lot of other really pricey kinda stuff.

Remember when you were in grade school and they told you that pot would lead directly to Heroin? That's kinda like the warning I'm giving you about the BA-660.
 
Ron Allaire, Skyline
The only ba-660 I know of lives at Chung King (if it hasn't been swiped). That pre is based on a "mu follower" circuit, which is a cathode follower with gain by way of an "active" plate resistor and a "constant" current source on the cathode resistor. The Avalon 737 is a similar circuit and sounds NOTHING like the Hanks. Also, it's a completly different animal than the V series, which imo is a more "traditional" pre. The ba stands for "bad ass" and it pretty much sums it up.