Piezo and magnet pickup mixing preamps

[tjclem]

What blend preamps are out there what have you all used? thanks....tom

Or should this be in asked in another section?

[FBB Custom]

I have used the Bartolini MPB and I have used the Highlander preamp to mix a signal with a Lane Poor/magnetic combo. If I were going to do one today I would probably talk to John East or Audere.

The Highlander is a ridiculous package for electric bass work and the MPB's input impedance did not seem ideal for all piezo setups.

It's also going to depend on which piezo setup you use. If you go with the Graph Tec or the RMC then you might just want to get the buffers they make.

[yooloo]

i have 2 Noll Mix pots, very happy with both MP2 and MP3b. dead quiet, small and they bot have phase jumper + trimpots for each pup.

[jay_t]

My Stambaugh has the Bart Xseries narrow soaps through an NTMP and Shadow Piezos (ABM bridge) through the Bart MPB and it sounds really good. I hear a ton of good things about RMC all of the time though. And it will get crowded if you aren't careful. Keep in mind that I have 3 batteries and stereo outs which add as well.

[tjclem]

The one I am working on currently has a ETS 5 string bridge and a Noll mixpot on that came with it. The bridge has 5 outputs andthe Noll only accepts 1 so it seems sort of silly. I guess you are supposed to put the piezos in parallel then connect them to the preamp. I bought another bridge that just has one output and was wondering about other mixing amps. Where can you get them in the states too? The customer had these sent direct from ETS.t

[fookgub]

I've used the Graphtech system. Installation was a breeze, and there are lots of wiring options to suit your particular needs.

It cleans up my magnetic tone in an odd way, though. Part of this is the high impedance input, but I think the preamp might have slightly less than unity gain, too. Anyway, I actually like it, because I installed a bypass switch. With the pramp bypassed I get my regular passive tone. With the pramp engaged it's cleaner with more highs and an overall smoother sound. On top of that I can blend in the piezos or go piezo only (piezos are only available with the preamp engaged). It makes for a lot of available sounds.

The preamp also lets me run in mono or stereo (with the piezos and magnetic pickups going to separate signal chains). In stereo mode, I can use the bypassed magnetic tone along with the piezos, which is very cool. I hacked this part of the system together. If you know what you're doing, it's not hard, but Graphtech doesn't provide instructions.

[tjclem]

Where did you get the system?....t

[fookgub]

eBay. I think you can buy directly from Graphtech, too. I made a couple of annotations to my previous post about my particular installation.