TC Electronic presents SpectraDrive Bass Preamp & Line Driver

This looks cool. Love the headphone out. Would like to hear how useable that is.

 

looks like a winner to me!

 

The headphone out would be very useable if you were trying to practice late at night or any other situation where you need to not make much noise. It is not intended to be used as a live gig monitoring device like IEM's.

 

If the aux in also had a blend knob you could blend the signal with your bass. That would have been even better!

 

You can easily make a little box with a good stereo pot and use this unit as a IEM device.

Yep, TC is becoming a very good brand with this preamp, it only miss a bluetooth connection for the phone or audio device.
A blend knob for the aux in.
Maybe adding another TonePrint knob with multiple effects capability?

Very interested in a review of this unit.

 

Whether this is a buy for me depends on the eq. If only it was semi parametric—then it would be a no brainer.

 

Does Intelligent EQ mean that you can set your own centers? It would be pretty great if you could set it up with HPF and LPF with two variable mid controls.

 

I don’t think you can do that but it would be pretty amazing for sure.

 

Could this be the Plex killer so may have been waiting for? The only thing it'as missing is a tuner

 

No. But it means that the frequency center is different when boosting vs. cutting.

 

I am really surprised they didn't include a tuner. They pretty much have one built into all their bass amps.

 

The big question is how deep the editing goes with the toneprints. I have a spectracomp and while it's a good comp, I could only get it to work the way I wanted by manually editing all the parameters via the editor. If it's the same thing like the heads and combos where you can only upload toneprint presets, then it's still fine, but being able to edit the comp and drive would be awesome.

 

Unfortunately, not the PLEX killer I was waiting and hoping for. Not even a tuner and mute function on the TC. No other TonePrint capabilities other than the overdrive. A bypass switch for who knows what? The PLEX does more. TC could have made the ultimate bass pre-amp, something totally unique by basing it off their BH heads, but they missed the mark here.

 

+1000!

Don't know about the tonal qualities of the BH stuff, can say that the tuner in the BGs is crap BUT STILL THERE IS ONE and I don't get it at all why they would have a bypass switch and not let the customer choose what kind of TP they'd like with it. Love the Spectra Comp by the way.

PLEX does more, but the Overdrive and Comp sections have been criticized a lot.

 

PS: Agreeing with someone who said that drive sent to FoH without some form of Cab Sim can be tricky / too harsh sounding!

 

+Cab sim and it would be all perfect

 

Has anyone seen specs on the EQ frequencies?

 

It says it's the same preamp as the BH800 so here are the specs from the BH800:

Tone control: Bass
50 Hz @ Gain -24 to 0 dB; 80 Hz @ Gain 0 to +24 dB

Tone control: Low Mids
200 Hz @ Gain -24 to 0 dB; 160 Hz @ Gain 0 to +24 dB

Tone control: High Mids
630 Hz @ Gain -24 to 0 dB; 800 Hz @ Gain 0 to +24 dB

Tone control: Treble
1800 Hz @ Gain -24 to 0 dB; 4000 Hz @ Gain 0 to +24 dB

 

Actually, you can use both compressor and drive Toneprints. And, it looks like there are three stages of drive so it looks to be pretty versatile in that regard.