Favorite Preamp; What's Your top 3 ?

Audere Z-Mode for the utterly unlimited number of sounds and options it delivers.
Aguilar OBP-3 for the sheer power.
EMG BQC for the price and mid sweep.

 

1) Talkbass TB-11 (yes, it's a thing )
2) Alembic SVF
3) EBMM Stingray/Sabre

 

Subscribed. As a "passive only" Luddite, I'm interested in experimenting with an active setup, so I'm very interested to see what people recommend... and why.

 

Same Here MR Ogle, I went to rudy's last night and tried the pensa (designed originally by Suhr?) preamp, sounded better than the sadowsky and the tech 21 to me on a maple neck 74 jazz. Was 300 bones but looks like my leading contender. Was given a tone hammer by a friend a year ago and ended up selling it on TB here..

So from the ones Ive tried
1. pensa - fat warm and still vintage sounding
2. tech 21- versitle
3. sadowsky - modern but great sound , especially live

going back to queens in a week to retry sadowsky preamp. will report back!

 

EMG BQ-A in my Jazz
Ampeg SVT-IIP, good rock bite with earth shaking lows & clear highs.

Those are the only two pre's I have & do use.

 

on board or rack unit?

 

If onboard , in no perticular order , Alembic , Audere , ACG

 

Was that project ever finished? I was following it and then it seemed to stop.

 

As far as I can tell, yeah, it's finished. That last preamp version had a power section module, a buffering blend with optional passive simulation, and then an active two-band (optional mid control) section. But I think the project man got a bit sidetracked so he hasn't improve on it (swapping the 2/3-band-EQ with an SVF module, for instance).

 

I have a passive Jazz that I wanted to keep that way, but I recently picked up an Aguilar DB 924, which gives me boost only bass/treble along with level control. Not quite as versatile as some actual on-board pre's perhaps, but it's great for beefing up my sound if I need to do that. Plus, it's a separate box that's easy enough to use with any bass I play, so I can keep my passive bass as it is... easy day.

In my limited experience with on-board preamps, I've had nice results with EMG and Bartolini rigs and I'm sure that others are also terrific. The biggest trick in this department though, seems to be starting out with half-decent tone in the instrument. A preamp can't make something out of nothing - I learned this the hard way - and by "hard", I mean expensive.

 

Another vote for the EMG BQC/BQS.
Inexpensive, very nuetral sounding with the knobs set at the detents, and I like the semi-parametric mid control.

 

The BTC/BTS is also nice if you want a 2 band. Another nice 2- and 3-band preamp(s) are the Kent Armstrong units from WD Music. They are fairly inexpensive and sound very musical.

 

1. AGC (if you got to have a preamp, make it wild!)
2. J-retro (more options than I can think of, and use.)
3. EMG BTC (my first preamp)

 

The ones I built are my top 3. they all have been tweaked from the original designs

1) SVF filter (killer mids!!)
2) Baja Sonic Stomp
3) Sabre 2 replica

 

Sadowsky
Nordstrand 2 band
Aguilar OBP2

 

Bartoini NTMB-918F
EMG BTS system
Audere 3 band

 

Mike Pope Flexcore
Bartolini NTMB
EMG BQC/S

 

Sadowsky, Aguilar, and Pope

 

Nothing at all wrong with Seymour Duncan and EMG pre's. I certainly like them both better than the Sadowsky. When I owned sadowsky basses that is what impressed me the least was the preamps.