Help! What would a pre-amp do for me?

The wording of your post suggests you may not be quite clear on the concept of what a preamp actually is.

Your GK is an amp head. That is a preamp and a power amp in one box. The preamp is the part with all the knobs on it. You can do a whole lot to affect your tone with the EQ you've got right now... so experiment.

But there also are preamps that get mounted inside your bass. These are called "on-board preamps" (e.g. Aguilar OBP-1, etc.) that will alter the tone coming out of your bass.

What a preamp does is shape your sound... give you more or less bass, midrange and treble. In other words, EQ. To hear what changing your EQ sounds like, go over to basstasters.com and listen to the various preamp sound clips with and without EQ.

You also can use a preamp as a kind of effects box. This is what the SansAmp Bass Driver (which is a preamp in a stomp box) can do. You can dial up a loud, punchy, even fuzzy tone that you can punch in and out with the footswitch, which can be handy in the middle of some songs. But remember that you can do the same sort of thing with your existing controls, though you wouldn't be able to switch in and out.

Hope this helps...

 

New preamps, new poweramps, new cabs are usually for people who aren't satisfied with the sound they have right now. If you are happy the way things are with your rig, GREAT, count yourself fortunate! I wish I could be satisfied with my amps, cabs and guitars.

G.A.S. annonymous intro for me: "Hi I'm mike and I'm a gearoholic in four years I've owned three guitars, 4 combos, 1 amp head, 1 preamp, 4 different cabs, and 3 effects boxes. I've spent
$5,685 on equipment"

 

G.A.S. annonymous intro for me: "Hi I'm mike and I'm a gearoholic in four years I've owned three guitars, 4 combos, 1 amp head, 1 preamp, 4 different cabs, and 3 effects boxes. I've spent
$5,685 on equipment" [/B][/QUOTE]



Only 4? I've owned about 15 basses in the last year! You're perfectly well.