Ward Beck M460 Preamp Stereo Rackmount Pair WBS

Up for sale, a matched stereo pair of Ward Beck M460 preamps in excellent condition and in good working order. Considered the "Canadian Neve," WBS products were known for their extremely high quality and were the main competitor for Neve in the 1970s and 80s, although as Neve famously moved over into recording consoles, Ward Beck stayed focused on broadcast applications. 
This particular pair was mounted into a 2RU rack by Colin Phelps and boasts stereo XLR ins and outs. Well cared for and sparsely used since it was serviced and racked, this M460 pair came to us here at Mike & Mike's Guitar Bar from a working studio and all functions are working as intended.

A bit of history and spec info courtesy of Ward Beck guru, Dave Thomas:
"The M460 module was designed by Roger Beck to compete with the Neve 1081 modules during the mid 70's and was so successful that Ward Beck could not keep up with orders from the Broadcast industry where the consoles outsold Neve 2:1 into North America. Ward Beck never even considered marketing these to the recording industry as they were so busy with broadcast clients such as ABC, NBC and the CBC in Canada plus many small stations.

The M460 has a transformer similar to a the St Ives used by Neve in the 1073/1081 modules. The M460 has a gain of 70db in the preamp, with a 6db per octave rolloff built in after 50 khz. The M460 has a frequency response 1db down at 20hz The M460 preamp is discrete class "A" except for the output stage which is clas A/B, and this is why both the M460 has 6db more headroom in the preamp stage than a Neve 1073 or 1081!
The M460 has a completely variable hp filter and will deliver +30dBM with .25% distortion. The M460 was meant to work into 600 ohm loads as per the old broadcast standard and features balanced outputs. The M460 uses high quality tantalum capacitors in the audio chain which are more expensive than electrolytics and do not dry out and breakdown like the electrolytic caps do over time! The tantalum produces odd harmonic distortion, which is more musical than the even harmonic distortion produced by electrolytics."