One thing that blew my mind is preamps. I had a fender Jazz circa 1990 and when I started playing again a few years ago made a pedalboard with a microtubes Infiniti.
I then went to a Spector 5 active and now a Kiesel ZB6 that’s active. Both of those just sounded muddy as all get out. On my board. I could never get a good tone no matter how much I adjusted the compressor, filters, and EQ on the microtubes. This went on for a year or so with me adding a separate compressor and distortion.
Then one day I bypassed the microtubes and it sounded a million times better.
To my point… I wonder how many people like me got preamps or EQs that never needed them. I’m still flabbergasted that the microtubes gets so much love but I could never get the strings to have even volume no matter how much tweaking I did. The B-E would boom loudly while the rest were fairly dead. High pass set, eq adjusted. Nothing helped. Bypass. Great. So does an active kinda negate the need for a preamp? Probably. I just use my microtubes as a very expensive DI box.
I then went to a Spector 5 active and now a Kiesel ZB6 that’s active. Both of those just sounded muddy as all get out. On my board. I could never get a good tone no matter how much I adjusted the compressor, filters, and EQ on the microtubes. This went on for a year or so with me adding a separate compressor and distortion.
Then one day I bypassed the microtubes and it sounded a million times better.
To my point… I wonder how many people like me got preamps or EQs that never needed them. I’m still flabbergasted that the microtubes gets so much love but I could never get the strings to have even volume no matter how much tweaking I did. The B-E would boom loudly while the rest were fairly dead. High pass set, eq adjusted. Nothing helped. Bypass. Great. So does an active kinda negate the need for a preamp? Probably. I just use my microtubes as a very expensive DI box.
