Aguilar OB3 or Bartolini EQ

[Darshan]

I'm ordering a Mayones Be4 bass and I am contemplating upgrading to the Aguilar OB3 rather than the Bartolini 2 Band EQ. The pick ups are Bartolini jazz pickups and the bass is made from amazaque. Could anyone with experience with these two different pre-amps possibly give me some advice/outline any differences between the two.

Thanks

[Paulie D]

Originally Posted by Darshan

I'm ordering a Mayones Be4 bass and I am contemplating upgrading to the Aguilar OB3 rather than the Bartolini 2 Band EQ. The pick ups are Bartolini jazz pickups and the bass is made from amazaque. Could anyone with experience with these two different pre-amps possibly give me some advice/outline any differences between the two.

Thanks

Hi Darshan, I just signed up here and this is my first post.
I saw your post and I want to say, I have the aguilar OB3 circuit in one of my basses.
It's a great circuit and very flexable with getting different types of tones. It is also on the high output side. But, over all I am happy with it...
I don't know about the Bartolini 2 band EQ. I never had Bartolini's but one of my favorite bass player ( Jeff Berlin) uses them...

Hope this help you out a little....
Paulie D.

[Arthur U. Poon]

I recently had a set of Bartolini Classic Bass J-style pickups wired into my Mike Lull J-style 5-string, which has an 18-volt Agular OBP-3 preamp. IMO the Bartolini pickups/Aguilar OBP-3 preamp pair up well. The OBP-3 has a lot of power to cut or boost, -although I've never found it necessary to do any drastic cutting or boosting. IMO the "flat" sound of the OBP-3 is very good to begin with.

My bass has a passive/active switch; I find the Bart's sound very Fender-ish in passive mode. In active mode, I now have sounds that I wasn't able to get from my old Duncan single coils, because of 60-cycle hum.

I've never tried a Bartolini preamp connected to J-style pickups. I do have a Roscoe 6-string with Bart soapbars and a Bart preamp. IMO the Bart preamp has a great sound, I especially like how it's high end sounds slightly compressed. But for whatever reason, it's very noisy in a few of the clubs I play at compared to my Lull with it's Aggie preamp. One of my next projects is to have my Roscoe's Bart preamp replaced with an OBP-3.

[Darshan]

Thanks!