Anyone played both setups? I have the Noiseless passive pickups with active Fender preamp and was wondering how the Audere compared. I hear a lot of good things about it.
I have both an MIA Fender Jazz Deluxe 5 with SCN's in it, and a workhorse bass (Squier Affinity Jazz 5-string with Audere JZ-3). I picked up a set of SCN's off E-Bay to turn the Squier into a ballpark approximation of my MIA so I could cop a similar tone/vibe and give the MIA a rest on the brutal hot gigs of summer. Long story short, the SCN/Audere combo did not really do it for me. In fact, I recorded before & after clips of the stock Squier pickups/Audere combo vs the SCN/Audere. I was shocked, but the SCN/Audere combo was not too much of an improvement over the stock pickups & certainly nothing like how they sound in the MIA. BTW, both basses are Alder body & Rosewood neck if it matters to anyone. The SCN/Audere recording had just a little bit more high end frequency to it, and a little better overall clarity (not much), but the stock Squier pickups had much better low-mid growl happening and were a lot hotter output than the SCN's. I put the stock pickups back in the Squier & bought (currently waiting for) a set of Duncan Basslines 1/4 pounder pickups from a fellow TB'er to try out with the Audere. All that said, I think the Fender Deluxe preamp must have some serious coloration going on, given the drastic tonal difference of how the SCN's sound in it vs. with the Audere. But then the Audere is not meant to be a heavily colored preamp. I love the Audere - it's going to go in all my basses from here on out. Also, another TB'er in a different thread mentioned some noise issues & low output levels with his Audere/SCN combo - I did experience both, not to a big extent, but there was some very low level hiss in the Hi-Z & Low-Z modes with the SCN's, and I've already mentioned the lower output level in the recorded clips I did. Sorry for the extremely long winded response, but this is all still very fresh in my memory, as I tried this combo only last week. It may save you some time & trouble. My best advice is to avoid the Audere/SCN combo specifically. Maybe consider an Audere and any other set of pickups (other than SCN's) for your jazz bass, or only new pickups for it. Hope this helps...
I was just going to buy an Audere deluxe model preamp for my Am Dlx J V, with SCN's. The seller told me that for some reason, the Audere doesn't work with the SCN's, and that was the main reason he was selling it. I thought he may have been wrong or giving me a line. I guess there might be something to it.
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