All it takes is a preamp...

AZNBassist · #1 07-30-2007, 10:23 AM

Holy crap! Up until today, I never knew how much of a difference a preamp could make

. Before that, I went around just plugging my realist pickup from my upright straight into the amp or worse, into the PA. The results pretty much sounded like Ron Carter/NHOP's tone, but much worse with WAY too much treble/twangyness/fingernoise. I thought for a moment that I had been a victim of false advertising and was ready to ditch my realist for some other pickup.

But, after hearing a recommendation for a preamp, I finally got a Fishman Pro-Eq preamp and tried it with my bass and all of a sudden, the tone from the amp improved tremendously

. There was no more of that very trebly/twangy sound, but it had a more solid/bassy sound and even when I went Bass->Preamp->PA without a microphone it still sounds passable (though never a substitute for the "real" acoustic sound).

So I'm wondering, how can a preamp make so much difference? Have any of you guys experienced anything alike?

drurb · #2 07-30-2007, 10:30 AM

Input impedance. The Fishman should load your pickup quite optimally whereas other amps you have used and with which you have been dissatisfied probably had a non-optimally low input impedance resulting in an effective high-pass filtering of the pickup's output. In such a case, the bass would be lacking and the pickup would sound more "tinny" than you would like.

bloodyjack · #3 07-30-2007, 08:39 PM

If only people would try this they too would be amazed.
No pre-amp is like driving your car without any tires

drurb · #4 07-30-2007, 10:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bloodyjack

No pre-amp is like driving your car without any tires

Well, IMO, not really. Amp heads have a pre-amp stages. An outboard pre-amp becomes of benefit when the pre-amp stage of the head does not load the transducer properly and/or lacks desirable tone controls and/or lacks desirable signal filters/conditioners. It is true that few amp heads incorporate all of what many of us want so we use outboard pre-amps. I'd say that in many cases, no outboard pre-amp is like driving on cheap factory tires when what you want is performance tires with aggressive tread.

Dave Whitla · #5 08-02-2007, 08:27 AM

Nice metaphors guys! I once had my bridge collapse while the bass was amplified with an Underwood pickup in the bridge wings (with a preamp)- would that be like getting a flat tire on the freeway?!?