That Particle Accelerator does look like an interesting curiosity! Will be keeping my eye out for that one as well. I've never had the opportunity to experience an Alembic F-2B though...
5sg.
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The Great Bass Preamp/DI Comparison
- Thread starter chadhargis
- Start date
That Particle Accelerator does look like an interesting curiosity! Will be keeping my eye out for that one as well. I've never had the opportunity to experience an Alembic F-2B though...
5sg.
I have owned both. The original was very noisy which Doug was gracious enough to get his tech here in Ontario to fix....it was a great booster or preamp. I also have the new one. The way I used both I dint find them mid focused some the od's.
I like it. Its not ground breaking, but it does a good job as a boost or as a preamp to add some depth and clarity
So, I have the PA, I have the Frog pedals fx1, which also has some additional features. I've owned John K's alembic F2b I think it was called. I've owned the Suncoast f2b and the Sushi is every bit as good at a fraction of the price. Feed it 500ma or more and it's a happy pedal. It's that classic Alembic, Fender 2/10/2 tone stack......I just built a pt nano board around the Sushi pedal to go with my Reiner Saturn V for jV for grab and go jams and small venues...
The BassTheWorld demo of the Harmonic Booster is probably my favorite representation I've seen and heard of it so far. But I'll do my best to put my opinion into words.
As far as my needs go, I never use distortion. I attempt a clean, glassy sound. Hi-Fi, active, modern single coil type tones, but often play funk covers as well in my band. I prefer an amp that doesn't add much color and I've never sought out the Darkglass signature sound. To my ears, that's basically what the character knob does. There's probably more to it, but turning it clockwise seems to cut low mids and highs, while boosting bass and high mids. But it also seems to give almost a slightly warm compression to those aforementioned boosted frequencies. It's quite pleasant in a mix, but not necessarily amazing by itself. I tend to use the character gently through an amp, but a little bit more aggressively through headphones or IEM's. I like the high end roll off through cans. It's almost like the high end roll off of a blended cab sim and DI signal. Even with the character knob off and light EQ adjustment, it makes a passive bass sound active and an active bass sound even more active(ish). I LOVE it for slap and leads. Instead of the typical mid scoop slap sound that can disappear with light finger style, it stays present in a mix. Basically a "bedroom tone" that can actually sound great with a full band. Hopefully this makes sense.
I'm having LOTS of fun swapping back and forth with the DG and the NUX. DG for the modern, and the NUX with the AGL model for the warmth. Slight dirt for some saturation plays well with the soloed bridge pickup. Adding my own IR in the NUX fed by the DG is such a pleasant combination with both pickups evenly blended for the modern glassy bits.
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First clip NuX, Noble in the second clip? The only thing that I could really readily hear was a slight bass boost in that second clip...
I'll say #1 is the Noble simply because #2 has more hiss. They're pretty similar with #2 having more top end to my concrete ears.
Both sound great, though.
I'm guessing clip 1 is Noble and clip 2 is something else. Why? Clip 2 has a lot more noise than clip 1 and we've already established the Noble is pretty quiet.
- John
Clip #1 is Noble with bass boosted to 9:00, treble flat.
Clip #2 is NUX using Aguilar preamp IR.
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No cabsim on the NuX? Im reading "Aguilar preamp IR" as the Aguilar modeler preamp but with no cabsim.
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I've been going back and forth with @scubaduba about why his NuX recordings have so much noise. There is a reason. He's keeping the NuX Volume very low. Which means his noise level is pretty much entirely the fixed output circuit noise (from D/A out to the DI Out).
The NuX's DI Out is much hotter than mic level. It's seems like plugging a line-level output into a mic-level input for scuba even though he says he's using a line in. My interface handles the NuX's DI output level with the Volume way up just fine (up to digital clipping at the D/A).
If he could get his NuX volume up, he would get a much better signal-to-noise ratio.
- John
The NuX's DI Out is much hotter than mic level. It's seems like plugging a line-level output into a mic-level input for scuba even though he says he's using a line in. My interface handles the NuX's DI output level with the Volume way up just fine (up to digital clipping at the D/A).
If he could get his NuX volume up, he would get a much better signal-to-noise ratio.
- John
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jacoby75
Supporting Member
- Mar 11, 2010
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- Endorsing Artist: Mike Lull Custom Guitars, DR Strings
I keep missing the hiss everyone is talking about. Must be my speakers. Just using Labtec computer speakers with a sub that I've had since the dawn of computers. Nothing fancy. But on the plus side, everything sounds fantastic and apparently you don't hear any of the bad parts!
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I definitely preferred the sound of Clip #1. It sounded more expensive.
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