I just got back from a vacation (Oaxaca, Mexico - wonderful people, food, sights, music - highly recommended!) and had a chance to play around with the Genzler Pre some more. This was at home, strictly living room volume, but this time I used the Pre in front of my older Hartke Kickback 12 (KB), 120 watt version with a paper cone speaker.
I have used the KB for many, many years in theater pits and for lower volume gigs of all sorts. While I prefer my Shuttle 6.0 or NeoPak into my Bergs, the KB is a pretty good and useful tool. I set the amp to my normal default settings: bass, 2:00; mid, 12:00; treble, 10:00; Shape (mid-cut), about 350 hz. I gain matched the Pre so that it was close to unity with the volume of the bass plugged directly into the front of the KB. I, once again, was using my Roscoe Beck V with TI Jazz Rounds.
I played around with the eq settings on the Pre and ended pretty much with the settings I had reported in my previous post: bass, 1:00; mid 2:00; mid frequency, 2:00; treble, 12:00. I then adjusted the Contour channels.
I noodled around for a couple of hours playing various grooves, walking bass, melodic arrangements, and the Bouree I and II from Cello Suite 3 and the Prelude from 1, both at pitch and an octave lower. I found myself gravitating more towards Contour B set between 9:00 - 12:00, although Contour A also sounded good.
Once again, I found the Pre to add a certain je ne sais quoi. Hard to describe precisely, but it is an added presence and musicality, a forwardness, with authority and fullness. Since this was at low volume, I really wasn’t going for punch. There is a subtle but different feel while playing. I continue to be very impressed with the Pre.
A big caveat is that I haven’t done any blinded A/B testing with the Pre. Maybe I can when my brother, who is also a bassist, comes to visit next week. I’ll see if I can rig something with my Radial AB or Morley ABY pedals for fast switching between using the Pre and not to see if I can reliably and consistently tell the difference in a blinded test.
I would love to understand, in general terms without compromising proprietary information, what aspects of preamp design contribute most to this. I find that some preamps and amps have this and some don’t. An example of an amp that did, in my experience, was the old Epifani UL901. My real old Ampeg SB-12 also had it as well (an open and airy quality, but not “heft” or “weight”), but only at low volume, my Ampeg B-15S, not quite (though it had “heft”) My old Yamaha B100-III with dual full parametric controls, while sounding good, did not. As much as I love my Shuttle 6.0 and NeoPak 3.5 - they aren’t going anywhere - the Genzler Pre adds to them to bring out these qualities even more.
The words “authority,” “heft,” “airy,” “open,” “presence,” “musicality,” “fullness,” “weight.” “oomph,” etc. are really hard to define and are subjective, but to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, I know it when I hear it, or at least think that I do (see above comment about need to do blinded tests).
How does it do that? Inquiring minds want to know. Is it mostly the shape of the equalization curves? But if that is the case, why does the Pre still have some of this when set flat and the Contours off? Why can’t I recreate it with other preamps, say my Fishman Pro Platinum with 5 bands of graphic eq? My Sansamp BDDI and VT Bass can add fullness and punch, but there is a “compressed” sound and lack of openness seemingly always there. Are there differences in op amp responsiveness? Again, respecting intellectual property, are there general answers to these questions understandable to an educated lay person? My graduate degrees, training and career were in biochemistry and molecular biology, not electronics.
Thanks,
Dennis
