Hello Talkbass,
Needing some recommendation from you all, preamp-fiends. I've started reading through the thread...but the amount of option and information is a bit overwhelming to be honest !
Long story short : I've used a VTDI for a few years now. Despite liking it overall, I always add some issue tweaking it
perfectly how I like. However, I felt the additional EQ interesting in combination with my simple amp preamp (Ampeg VR). Also, it allowed me to send a nice "mic cab" sound through the DI to the FOH (I like to use distortions and Fuzzes and want to avoid the “hornet nest” sound coming from the PA).
A few weeks ago, we went in the studio with the band. The sound engineer spent a lot of time setting up the tone/sound for everybody and we ended up...ditching the VT bass from chain. Doing so made me push my amp settings in pretty crazy directions but really opened up and clarify my sound (who would have known ! lol).
We also tested the VT as DI only but we were not fully happy with the result, too much baked in sound. Which to my noobie surprise sounded very different from the VR/412 miced cad when doing A/B test with the VTDI!.
So, I am now very happy with my amp+cab tone but disappointed with the preamp, which is very important to me for live situation (cab is rarely miced and engineers rather have a DI 99% of the time).
I've naturally logged on Talkbass to look for options and oh boy...I am a bit lost here !
The requirements I have :
- a preamp mainly for a fat clean sound as I use my other pedals for overdriving. I don't mind if the preamp as the ability to go very overdriven, but it’s not at all needed.
- no fender tonestack EQ, I find it quite counter-intuitive and I love to easily boost both my bass AND mids.
- a parallel out of some kind, as I really like how the Ampeg VR and the 412 work together. HOWEVER, maybe my experience with the VTDI biaised my view on this and you guys had good results mixing EQs from a preamp pedal + preamp head. Let me know!
- MAYBE a cab simulation of some sort. The pedal should be mainly used to feed the FOH a nice colored DI (and avoid disto/fuzz "bees" effect) and home for practice. But again, maybe a cab simulation isn't mandatory to fulfill these two requirements.
So far I’ve thought about various preamps but still undecided :
- Arkham Oracle : sounding huge ! But no parallel out, no cab sim (if needed), coming from far away (I’m in Europe)
- Aguilar Tone Hammer : no parallel out, no cab sim, and would have zero use for the AGS.
- SLO III : seemed to have it all but….I can’t work with a fender tonestack ! Also, the two last time I ordered from Russia, customs messed everything up and the parcels went back to the seller.
- Sushi Particle Accelerator : sounding nice, but no DI nor parallel out
- DSM Simplifier : this one seem to do it all…….but also seem to be the less attractive in tone and sound
If anybody can give me some advice, I feel like running in circle so far !
EDIT: budget wise, around 800 USD should be my limit
