Best Clean Preamp

Sushi Box Underground Accelerator. There's no substitute for tubes!

Underground Accelerator – Sushi Box FX

 

My favorite for clean and flexible is the Southampton Ictineo (Ictineo Preamp/EQ).

I also support the SushiBox recommendation, though I recently narrowed my SushiBox pedals down to just the Slampegg. Broughton also makes several excellent preamp pedals that you should check out before making a decision.

Noting that the SushiBox pedals will be the most available (put an order in when monthly build slots become available). Broughtons and the Ictineo will mostly be used market buys (unless you want a Broughton SVPre which has been in and out of stock lately with more coming soon).

 

Yep and Sushi Box ordering is open NOW so the time to order is NOW!

 

I would have to say the Mesa Subway DI+. With a Sushibox in the effects loop - mine is the Space Heater. Is a very hard combination to beat. I sold my Avalon U5 after getting comfy with the Mesa. I am a big fan of the Avalon but the Mesa made it redundant.

 

Broughton Messenger v2 for me.

 

Take a look at the Tech 21 Q strip. It's crispy clean.

 

Two Notes Le Bass.
Or soon the Two Notes Revolt.

The good old Tube does it for me.

 

i have the v1 and love it, when I first got it my guitarist asked me what that was and said stop right there, not to change a thing, makes my tone very clear and present

 

For double bass i bought an EBS Stanley clark preamp and i found it very usable with electric bass.Very usable eq,2 ch.Everything i Always needed

 

If all you want is clean tone shaping, have a look at the Source Audio EQ2. Nothing will give you more power than that.

 

Definitely doesn’t have a malleable tone shaping palette. But the Sadowsky pedal preamp gets my vote. I have the bigger 1 version with the DI and Mute and I’ll tell you what, it’s great! Boost only 2 band EQ with a volume knob to set unity gain. It’s a bass preamp in a pedal, but I like it so much I never turn it off and bought 2! Have it at the end of my board and as an added benefit to making every bass I play sound great, it also helps give a nice bass boost to pedals that otherwise may be lacking!

 

Broughton Messenger…

 

What does SMD mean on his build options?

 

Trickfish Minnow warmed up with sushi box tubes works for me.

 

I had a Radial Tonebone Bass one which was great....I used for 6 years but sold it because it took up a lot of room on my pedalboard. I now use a MXR81....great clean bass preamp that doesn't color my sound!

 

I have enjoyed using the Roland JC120 guitar amp emulation in BandLab (and on my guitarist’s line 6 POD, and in my Behringer guitar V-amp Pro) for bass; it’s bright and crisp and the EQ seems to be pretty flexible and intuitive and simple to tweak.

I have been casually looking for simpler, non-modeling ways to get that sound, and while I haven’t pulled the trigger yet, I have my eye on this and may take the plunge at some point:

 

Some info here: FAQ – Sushi Box FX

"Up until now all builds have been using surface-mount (SMD or SMT) components for cost and ease of assembly. Currently these are mostly placed via pick-and-place machine in the same factory that manufactures the circuit boards themselves. There are a handful of specialty components that the factory doesn’t stock that are added by hand at Sushi Box, but the rest are done by machine. Hand-wired uses more traditional through-hole components that you’re likely to see in tube amplifiers, like carbon-composition resistors and film capacitors. There’s plenty of debate on the “sound” of different component materials and it’s extremely subjective so I won’t get into that. One very audible difference, however, is the voltage at which the tubes are run. In typical SMD builds I use 250V capacitors for cost and size reasons, so I run the circuits around 240V. The capacitors I use in the handwired builds range from 400V to 630V, which allows me to run the circuits around 350V. The difference in voltage gives the handwired circuits a noticeably warmer, fuller sound."

 

As some others have said... the venerable and often hard-to-get Broughton Messenger.

 

TC Spectra