Gear
Instruments
Fire-Eye Red-Eye Twin
The Red-Eye Twin does the basic Fire-Eye Red-Eye preamp one better: It adds a second channel. This means that if you have both a mandolin and a guitar onstage that you want plugged into the great features of a Fire-Eye, you can just use this single box, and save yourself a bit of money.
Now, while the Twin works great as an easy onstage instrument switcher, one hidden feature of this preamp is that it can also be used as a blending preamp. With essentially zero other blending preamps in this space anymore, this may be your best bet for a dual source / blending preamp and DI.
Awesome no fuss clean sound! I purchased this preamp mainly for open mic quick setup situations to ensure my sound going to the house PA was clean and balanced. I Have a Guildj30/12 that has a dual source K & K mini and a Sunrise sound hole pickup and needed a compact no fuss dual channel blending Di/preamp that sounded good for quick performance setup. The Fire eye dual is the perfect sounding compact pre and is very compatible with these two passive pickups systems. Being battery powered it speeds up the sound guys setup process, I just hand him my already dialed in Fire-Eye sound he plugs in XLR or TS patch cable from the FOH PA and I’m ready to play...very simple process. I love this preamp. Oh yeah nice touch by the sales department with the signed thank you card, classy move.
I recently upgraded the pickup system in my acoustic guitar to add a Seymour Duncan Mag Mic to my K&K Pure Mini. I needed a good dual-source preamp solution. Having previous experience with the Fire-Eye Red-Eye (single), I had a good idea what to expect from the Red-Eye Twin. Basically, the Red-Eye Twin is a preamp/DI box with very high quality, clean sound. It has two inputs that function very much like an A/B-Y switch box with one summed output. Add to that an adjustable Boost switch, separate gain and treble adjustments per channel and one effects loop send and one return all in a relatively small package and you have a really well designed, high-quality, road/tour-worthy preamp/DI.
What it isn't is this: it is not a tone tweaking device or one that is designed for troubleshooting problematic frequency issues. Meaning, it does not include sophisticated equalization tools. I know that there are some players who require more EQ adjustments at their feet (pedalboard). One option for that is that you can add an equalizer pedal in the effects loop of the Red-Eye if you need it.
To me, the best feature of the Red-Eye Twin, which is also true of the single input Red-Eye, is the input impedance flexibility. I am not an electronics expert, so I can't explain how this works. I just know from experience with other preamps that something about the Red-Eye approach to the input source really helps with the sound quality. I simply don't get overloading/clipping of the preamp with the Red-Eye. On top of that, what I do get is a really open, natural acoustic tone. Now, I realize part of that is dependant on the quality of the pickup system in the instrument, but if you have that covered, the Red-Eye will help it shine.
Overall, I find that the Red-Eye Twin is a really great preamp/DI. If you want to keep things simple and at the same time have a high-quality, clean tone from your instrument, with minimal tone shaping, the Red-Eye Twin might be a good choice for you.
Very efficient wit one instrument or to Switch beetween two instruments but a noticeable loss of level and quality sound when using the A+B mode. I'm overall satisfied. Great service from Shoreline.
I love love love my Red-Eye Twin! Serious tone!!!Thank you Shoreline!
Only had for a couple weeks now but amazing the difference in sound quality with my a/e guitar and electric banjo!