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Double Bass Raven Labs Universal Stereo Instrument Preamp
- Thread starter Win
- Start date
i have one, it collects dust. not really into the tone. i think the eq points are not good for bass either. when it came out it was very interesting because it was the only thing of its kind, but now there are many more better options in my opinion
What a lot of people don't like about it with the electric bass (myself included) is that it's ultra transparent. It works very well with acoustic instruments and the EQ points are fine for bass....I ran an ABG through this EQ for years. Something like a VT Bass, Tone Hammer or one of the Darkglass boxes in front of the Raven Labs makes it work great with an electric bass.
Here's a link to the manual if you don't already have one. It's a very versatile high quality unit designed and built by Steve Rabe who founded SWR and who worked on Jaco's Acoustic amps back in the day. I'd think unless you're hurting for money you'd want to keep it. My Raven Labs PMB also been gathering dust the last few years but now that I have another acoustic instrument coming into my life I'm really glad I've hung onto it.
Here's a link to the manual if you don't already have one. It's a very versatile high quality unit designed and built by Steve Rabe who founded SWR and who worked on Jaco's Acoustic amps back in the day. I'd think unless you're hurting for money you'd want to keep it. My Raven Labs PMB also been gathering dust the last few years but now that I have another acoustic instrument coming into my life I'm really glad I've hung onto it.
Your opinion is probably still useful though. This one has sweepable EQ and does more stuff like the "more me" thing that the PMB doesn't but they're both built by the same guy around the same time period with the same fundamental goal of extremely uncoloured preamping. How you feel about the basic sound of one is probably a pretty good indication of how you'd feel about the other.
well, i find the pmb-1 pretty useless for me, and i play upright. it was good when it first came out, but i think today products like the radial pz pre, the fdeck and tone hammer pedals kill it for getting a good upright tone but then again, my philosophy isnt to go after an uncolored piezo tone, because if you ask me, an uncolored piezo sounds like crap and sounds nothing like an upright bass. i like to have tons of eq, specifically control over the mids and a HPF, to get me closer to what an upright sounds like without being filtered through a piezo. (and plenty of high end roll off too)
I got a pretty natural sound out of it with a Gage realist....as "natural" as a piezo is ever gonna sound anyway. I liked what I heard and over the years got many compliments on my sound from players and soundmen.
My Raven Labs PMB-1 works great for me, blending a Fishman Full Circle and a Biesele electromagnetc pickup for my upright. I find the BMT EQ freqs to be usable and enjoy the separate gain, EQ and phase for each channel. The overall character is transparent/uncoloured. The DI out is very good indeed and I like the two 1/4" inputs or the freedom to use a 1/4" stereo in. There's no XLR input for a mic, though, even though there is phantom power. Tuner out is good, as is the effects loop. The input impedance is 1 MB which is OK but not as good for piezo as is the 10 MB of the PMB-2. I generally run mine off two 9v batteries and take the output into the power amp section of one of my GK heads: MB200 or MB500. My only gripe is that when you power up you get quite a thump through the out and the DI. I think that a lot of the features of the PMB-1 or -2 and the True Blue EQ were captured in the rackmount version OP was asking about.
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- Jul 19, 2000
- 2,014
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- Disclosures
- Owner/President, Gollihur Music LLC
WORD OF WARNING:
BE VERY CAREFUL with the power supply. The unusual, and nearly-impossible to replace, power supply uses a T/R/S mini phone plug. If you plug it into the unit (or unplug it) while the power supply is plugged into the wall, it can short out on the contacts and fail. And then you have no power supply (and no reasonable means to replace it.)
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS unplug it from the wall FIRST, then unplug it from the unit - and do the same in reverse for plugging it in.
BE VERY CAREFUL with the power supply. The unusual, and nearly-impossible to replace, power supply uses a T/R/S mini phone plug. If you plug it into the unit (or unplug it) while the power supply is plugged into the wall, it can short out on the contacts and fail. And then you have no power supply (and no reasonable means to replace it.)
ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS unplug it from the wall FIRST, then unplug it from the unit - and do the same in reverse for plugging it in.
This is a concern. However while the OEM wall wart is near impossible to replace you can build a cable that will allow you to use two 9v outlets on an isolated power supply like a Voodoo Lab ISO-5 or a T-Rex Chameleon. I've done it and it works. I haven't tried it but a wall wart daisy chain PSU might work too.
Yup, that's what killed mine. Fortunately it runs for ages on batteries.
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The D-TAR Solstice preamp that Bob and Mark sell is a substantially improved version of the old Raven Labs PMB series, as is the Equinox is of the True Blue EQ.
