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Skjold Custom John East vs Uni-Pre

phillipkregg

phillipkregg

Jun 8, 2010
3,681
5,824
Nashville, TN
#1
Howdy ya'll... I've got a Skjold Gen 5 that has the custom John East preamp with bass, treble, mids, mid-sweep, and passive tone control that works in both active & passive modes.

It is simply the greatest preamp I've ever heard and I can get any tone I desire out of it.

My question is, for those of you who maybe have owned or played both, how similar is this preamp to the John East Uni Pre that he sells on his website?

On a previous bass, I had a JRetro preamp but i wasn't too fond of it because it seemed to "darken" the natural tone of the bass quite a bit, but I don't seem to experience that with my Skjold.

The reason I ask is because I'm considering swapping out the preamp on my Fender American Elite 5 string with a more flexible one and if the Uni Pre is anything like my Skjold preamp, then that's exactly what I want in the Fender as well.
 
#2
Hey, did you ever try out the Uni pre? I just got a new skjold with the Uni pre installed and I’m having some issues with the Q on the mids seeming much more pointed and “filtery” than the skjold design preamp in my old bass. Is that something you noticed between the two?
 
#3
RRWesner said:
Hey, did you ever try out the Uni pre? I just got a new skjold with the Uni pre installed and I’m having some issues with the Q on the mids seeming much more pointed and “filtery” than the skjold design preamp in my old bass. Is that something you noticed between the two?
Click to expand...
The older U-retro was what was used in my earlier basses. Over the time John was working on the UNI-pre I had a lot of input in some of the features. The uni-pre 5-knob is the same as what I ended up using until I had my own U.S. made preamp produced a couple years ago, so they are the same. The Uni-pre has several different selectable EQ points so it is important to research the settings and see what the internal settings are set at. I tried to set everything basically flat but not sure if previous customers may have made alterations to it. All the info is on the East website.
 

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