Suggestions for a battery powered NON-balanced Mic Preamp?

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Hey all, I hope you can help me...

I'm taking a 6-month backpacking tour of Europe next year. I have been making my own binaural recordings using a Marantz MD recorder and a pair of home made earplug mics using Panasonic WM-61 capsules.

While the quality I'm getting from this setup is terriffic, there is no way I'm lugging that recorder around with me! Besides, it chows batteries like mad.

So I bought a Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. I'll be putting a 60GB hard drive in it to replace he 20GB it comes with. This will hold most of my music collection, plus be able to record. It's the only high-tech device I want to have with me...

Anyways, this things does a pretty nice job of recording. It should serve me well in making good binaural field recordings all over Europe! Here's what I need from a mic preamp.

1. Unbalanced - It's only going three feet up to my ears. I'm already doing this with the Marantz with no detectable noise.

2. Portable - Perhaps two 9V batteries for a +/-9v split supply?

3. Provide at least 2V power to the panasonic capsules. This is easy, as I'm already doing this for the Marantz with a simple passive battery box.

4. Compact - I like the Altoids tin idea. I made a headphone amp with two 9V batteries in one.

What do you think? Would a premium op-amp be good enough or should I go discrete? I can do the op-amp design no problem, but my skills are not honed enough to do a discrete design myself.

There are lots of good schematics out there for mic preamps, but they are usually balanced.

Thanks for any help...
 
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