Raven Labs PBR-1 P Bass Preamp

I installed one of these in my MIA 2000 P today. Installation was a cinch, just had to wire the pickup hot/cold wires to the preamp input and the bridge ground to the jack ground.

For those who haven't seen or read about it, it's a bit different from the usual onboard preamp. Instead of multi-band, it has a single eq control.
With tone control centred, the sound has no discernible difference from the passive sound (apart from it being louder than passive).

Cutting the tone from center boosts the bass and takes down the treble. Very K.I.S.S. and feels very intuitive. Great for fat fingerstyle and pick playing. Boosting the knob from center boosts the treble and thins out the bass somewhat. I'm not sure how much I'd use that mode, given I'm using brightish strings (DR SS Hi Beams). But with some bass boost on the amp, a slight treble boost yielded a crisper slap sound.

I was originally intending to keep this bass passive, but I really feel this is a truly transparent preamp when tone control is centred so I think I'll keep it in.

I'll post some clips over the next few days. I also have the new JBR-1 Raven Labs preamp which I'll be trying out in my passive Jazz bass soon. It uses the same single eq control concept, but has an active blend to alleviate some of the usual issues with blending two pickup signals.
edit: it's not an active blend, but a buffered input. There's still two volume controls.

 

I haven't noticed any evidence of that, I'll be recording it tonight and comparing to the passive sound. I'll post some clips.

 

ahh yes, it got caught up in a general P pickup shootout which I recorded badly and need to do again. But I certainly knock up a quick clip with the nord P and raven labs tonight. Watch this space!

 

I hear you. What I do love about it is that flat the passive sound is intact.

I've only used it for bass boost, i.e. cutting from center rather than the treble boost. So technically I guess I could do that (bass boost) on the amp but it's nice to have the onboard flexibility .

 

I've been doing a mini P shootout myself. Unfortunately I messed up some of the recordings so I'm waiting for some spare time to go back and rerecord the various pups.

I tried:
stock P
Nord P
Dimarzio P
Dimarzio Split P
EMG P

I've also still to try the Villex P, which I just got yesterday.
I'll be writing it all up later. The Nord is my favorite of the bunch so far, has the thump of the stock but more frequency range so you get a bit more of the top end. Which is what I like, but you might not
Anyho, the clip I'll do tonight will be Raven Labs and Nord P. I'll do it with the Raven flat, then do the same riffs etc with the Raven doing some bass boost. The preamp is a bit of a one trick pony, but it's a very good trick.

 

ok, here we go

go to http://briefcase.yahoo.com/david_wilson , under the NP4 folder

First minute is with preamp flat, second minute (second time round the riffs) is with eq knob cut about 40% from center - which cuts the treble and boosts the bass.

Played on a 2000 MIA P Bass 62 reissue, rosewood board and DR hi-beams. Recorded on to a Korg PXR-4

Done in a hurry, so a little bit sloppy in places

 

Yeah, the main difference between the stock and the Nord was in the frequency range. The difference comes out more through an amp - the recorder I use does high quality mp3 compression, but I think there's still some loss there.

But with the Raven, I agree that the character is retained and that's what I like about it. I may not keep it in there for ever, depends on how much I like the Villex P which is incompatible with the Raven Labs pre due to the insane Villex wiring.

I forgot I do have a Bart P to try as well, largely as a result of your recommendation.

 

Yes, it is a very cool bass. Now it's been gigged it's not in such pristine condition any more