Double Bass What features would your perfect preamp have? (DB Forum thread)

[Don Kasper]

The Red Eye has an LED blink feature ("battery OK" - "...if the battery is in the first 3/4 of its life...") when you plug the instrument cable in and it has a 200 hour battery life. I change the battery automatically every 3 months and NEVER wait for it to die. (I'm not a fan of Wall Warts.)
I also carry extra 9v. batteries in my gig bag, and buy 9v. batteries in bulk. (My Slabs all have active electronics.)
Problem Averted and/or Solved.
IMFO, of course.

 

[dkziemann]

I didn't read through the whole thread yet (oopsy), but one thing I miss on the Grace Felix is a power switch. Whatever you end up designing, please include one! (And congratulations on your efforts to build something that can benefit the DB community!)

 

[Passinwind]

I'm currently in school for electrical engineering. I've decided that I would like to spend the next year or so developing a perfect preamp for myself for live performances.

I'm in the very early stages and am just collecting ideas right now.

Features I would like to have:
Phantom powered capability
9v power capability
Highpass filter
Mute switch
Two channels of switchable eq
(One channel for main tone, one for boosted solo tone)
Fx loop

What features do you want in a preamp?

I'm rolling a DIY one for a friend's carved bass right now, so I think mostly listening rather than talking may serve me better right now. The mute switch was her first request though, FWIW.

For myself for my EUB I really like having a variable low pass filter, switchable for arco would be a bonus. Variable HPF is a given in what passes for my world.

 

[lowfreqgeek]

I think the Grace Felix is virtually perfect. The only thing I would theoretically add is the ability to have both a notch and an HPF running at the same time, but in the real world I have not needed this.

I think there are only 2 things that could improve on the Felix, IMO: 1) selectable bass EQ frequency, and 2) Mic 1 input feed to tuner. Mine, at least, doesn't feed the mic input to the tuner. Otherwise, that preamp is nearly perfectly featured for my needs.

 

[Anthony White]

So having said that the Felix is nearly perfect, I also find the case for the Noble compelling. Three knobs and an HPF switch, and then there is something about the electrical design of the preamp itself, rather than the features list, that causes people to love them and pay circa US$1200 for them.

 

[Anthony White]

I've seen Jorge Roeder live, and it looked like he ran a Noble for his piezo into the instrument channel of his Felix, and then also runs a mic in the mic channel.

 

[Jared Houseman]

I'm rolling a DIY one for a friend's carved bass right now, so I think mostly listening rather than talking may serve me better right now. The mute switch was her first request though, FWIW.

For myself for my EUB I really like having a variable low pass filter, switchable for arco would be a bonus. Variable HPF is a given in what passes for my world.

Thanks @Passinwind! For piezos, I think LPFs can do a good job hiding all the negative portions of a piezo sound. It'll sound good most of the time.
However being able to cut the piezo quack and boosting the "air" frequencies really makes my bass shine. In a dense mix, it won't matter though.
It's all a trade off of simplicity and control.

 

[Passinwind]

Thanks @Passinwind! For piezos, I think LPFs can do a good job hiding all the negative portions of a piezo sound. It'll sound good most of the time.
However being able to cut the piezo quack and boosting the "air" frequencies really makes my bass shine. In a dense mix, it won't matter though.
It's all a trade off of simplicity and control.

The ones I'm building can do boost very well too (think Alembic or Wal), and as a (very!) long time fretless BG player that's how I often use them myself. Wal is one of my touchstones, they use a separate treble boost in addition to a variable resonance LPF. Finding the right trade set is key, especially when user friendliness is important, as it so often is. My own DIY amps have a one band full parametric EQ in tandem with a regular three band EQ, and a variable HPF, which is pretty good for my EUB. Guest users often ignore the PEQ though, wheres most of them seem to "get" the variable resonance LPF thing well enough to at least try spinning the knobs a bit more.

BTW, my designs are open source and if you want to try building any of them or to just take a look I have shared schematics, circuit board fab files, and BOMs in the Talkbass Wiki. The later versions are still in development, so those schematics are provided by request (PMs) for the moment until I settle on bedrock specs. There's a long running and long reading thread on the BG side in the Pickups and Electronics forum as well.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!

 

[Ric Vice]

Since I've used the Grace Felix and Headway EDB-2 since they were released, they both have their quirks, but what I find fascinating is how the control layout and size interact with using them on the gig. The Headway EDB-2 is portable due to it's smaller size. It’s so compact that putting the Headway on a pedal board makes it very difficult to see and operate the controls for Grace Felix uses Dip switches and chicklet push buttons do all the signal routing. You get used to their controls but there’s a big learning curve. The EDB-2 and the Grade are much easier to negotiate if you play guitar or violin. Just my take

 

[Zbysek]

I use Broughton Messenger v1.2 with my NS Design EUB.

It’s almost perfect IMO.

Ability to rum on phantom power and integrated tuner would make it perfect.