Any Filter-based outboard preamps other than Alembic?

[RobbieK]

I am seriously thinking about putting a homemade Sallen-Key preamp in my fretless Jazz.

Go for it Ken. I've tweaked that design 2 or 3 times since then. And tried it in a couple of other basses. Right now I have it in my stingray pickup bass and I've got it so the resonance lowers with the frequency. This is one of the most musical sounding treble knobs I've ever used in a bass. Here's the sim...

This was originally aimed as a standalone control that emulates sweeping from series to parallel instead of just switching. But I found I had pretty much stopped using the treble contol of the (2-band) pre that's also in this bass. So I tweaked it to sweep lower and now I'm redesigning the pre to be bass/mid instead...

 

[Christian Powell]

So I am trying to marry my love of my passive basses with my love of filter-based electronics without modding and wondering if there are any outboard preamps that employ filtering other than the Alembic models.

Mind you I have nothing against Alembics, in fact they are in many ways the benchmark but I don't want to spend $1200 on an SF2.

Any suggestions are quite welcome.

Thanks.


Roger

Hey there, Roger,

I've been working with Alembic pickups for a while. A good option to emulate the Alembic System is the Bartolini EZQ. It's their parametric eq with adjustable Q. You can set it up as a HP or BP filter. I would recommend running it at 18v for the extra 6dB of headroom, plus add the gain boost to compensate for the Alembics low output. It sounds great, and works pretty much like the original system. I just built a fretless P-Bass for a friend with a P/J Alembic set, and he loved it.

 

[rogerbmiller]

Hey there, Roger,

I've been working with Alembic pickups for a while. A good option to emulate the Alembic System is the Bartolini EZQ. It's their parametric eq with adjustable Q. You can set it up as a HP or BP filter. I would recommend running it at 18v for the extra 6dB of headroom, plus add the gain boost to compensate for the Alembics low output. It sounds great, and works pretty much like the original system. I just built a fretless P-Bass for a friend with a P/J Alembic set, and he loved it.

Thanks. I would actually use this with a non-Alembic set up. I am just a fan of those types of electronics. I like the way they produce mids.

 

[Steve Dallman]

I've used a few Artec tone modules. I have an EXP in nearly every electric guitar I have. With it I can get crispier than single coil out of humbuckers (into piezo high end territory).

But in my two P-90 guitar (Lace Sensor noiseless P-90's) I have an Artec BCU. The little graph they have doesn't tell the story, as the moving graph looks the same as the EXP. They are quite different.

The BCU sweeps a peak. At the low end, it punches low mids. As you sweep it up, the peak moves until it reaches the high end. When the high end peak is reached, the lows have come up.

With my P-90's, in the middle the tone is relatively the same as bypassed, only louder. Turned down, the low end pushes like an overwound humbucker, with little high end, but boatloads of low mids. As you turn the control up, the peak moves up. In the higher end, the pickup is acoustic guitar/piezo bright.

So it acts as a moveable resonant peak. I put one in my Steinberger Spirit 5 string for a while, but found myself leaving it in the low regions most of the time.

For $20 it's a neat little module. Two in a two pickup bass would be excellent.
Artec Active BCU - Band Control Tone Expander

 

[Christian Powell]

Thanks. I would actually use this with a non-Alembic set up. I am just a fan of those types of electronics. I like the way they produce mids.

I forgot to mention that you can get the EZQ through Allparts even though they don't list in in their catalog. They can contact Bartolini and special order them. Bartolini doesn't really push these anymore, but they still make them. At least last I checked.