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Clean signal boost???

P

passive pickup

Dec 11, 2010
18
0
Northants
#1
Plugging my bass (9v emg pups) straight into my power amp (Crown xti1000) gives me exactly the tone i want, but not quite enough signal to push the power amp to war volume. I much prefer this tone to using my Madamp tube pre, or my Ibanez head.

Is there a simple (cheap!) bit of kit that can boost the guitar's signal to the amp without significantly colouring the tone? Maybe some sort of active DI box or such like?

A high-end preamp is financially out of the question, and tbh i don't want anything but a slightly stronger signal. I've been trying to get to grips with voltage and impedance matching of inputs/outputs but now i'm more confused than ever...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
 
#4
Experiement with the MXR 10 band EQ pedal if you can. It will take bass-level to line level on the input and output whatever you want it too without a lot of noise(IMO). This will also allow you the option of some signal shaping later if you want it.
 
#6
passive pickup said:
Plugging my bass (9v emg pups) straight into my power amp (Crown xti1000) gives me exactly the tone i want, but not quite enough signal to push the power amp to war volume. I much prefer this tone to using my Madamp tube pre, or my Ibanez head.

Is there a simple (cheap!) bit of kit that can boost the guitar's signal to the amp without significantly colouring the tone? Maybe some sort of active DI box or such like?

A high-end preamp is financially out of the question, and tbh i don't want anything but a slightly stronger signal. I've been trying to get to grips with voltage and impedance matching of inputs/outputs but now i'm more confused than ever...

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

Changing output resistance of the bass electronic from 10k to 1k increases the level to appro +6dB.
 
#7
You can pretty easily build a transparent boost pedal if you want to go the diy route.
I believe David from SGD has recommended the Alembic Stratoblaster for just the purpose you mention. I think it can have 22dB of gain.
 
#10
please bear in mind that plugging your bass straight into a power amp is doing it wrong. I'm no tech guru but there's impedance and level mismatching going on. Your power amp wants to see a line level signal and adding a (guitar level) pedal to the signal chain won't fix that.
A DI (use XLR out) or preamp is in order for you.
 
#14
Thanks for all the suggestions and advice, that's a great help! I'm not sure which way to go at the moment, i shall look into all of them. The Art mp sounds like the right thing, i'm just hesitant because i already have a tube pre. Having said that, for the cost there's little harm in trying it. Maybe because it's designed for mic rather than bass-specific it may be cleaner than what i have.
If i understand correctly, whatever i go for needs to accept a strong instrument level and output around 22dbu without colouring or distorting. That makes me think one of the suggested di or boost pedals may be the way to go.
 
#15
CL400Peavey said:
They are like $35 bucks new. You would be amazed at how clean they are, and will have all the boost you need to drive an amp.
Click to expand...

Years ago (+10) I used such an ART TubeMP for pre-amping my bass. It works well but IMO it does color the sound. Though the unit sounds warm it robs the signal a lot of detail....
Maybe when upgraded with a nice "hifi" kinda tube like a NOS Philips 5771 it may sound good.
 

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