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What were the best vintage solid state preamps?

#3
These are rare... and cool... and supposedly sound pretty darn good... the Ampeg SBT preamp. It was Ampeg's take on the Kustom thing, a SS preamp with powered cabs. Looks like an SVT head but without the amp. From the schematic I was able to download it utilized BC 169 transistors which are one of those "magic mojo" transistors people seek out nowadays for building overdrive pedals. If you can find one, it would be pretty cool to have.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...1&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0&biw=1280&bih=921
 
#9
runmikeyrun said:
whatever you do, stay away from the BBE 383. I used one for a few years and it's not very good at all. It has 6 eq knobs but they suck for shaping tone. The only good thing is the BBE processor. Otherwise it sucks!
Click to expand...

Sounds like you wanted it to do something that it wasnt supposed to do in the first place. Its a solid state preamp that was designed to keep your bass sounding like your bass, its not and wasnt designed to be a Sansamp. The EQ points on that pre are actually pretty useful if you understand how the tone stack in that unit works
 
#13
Agreed: Acoustic 360 is a solid state vintage pre-amp only. With the amp-powered cab =361.
Acoustic USA has "reissue" version; still pre amp?..I don't know, but they are real ; do exist.

Agreed on Furman: I love my Furman PQ-3. I own a black face re-issue. It is both Pre-Amp and Parametric EQ. Both are great. They also made PQ-4, 6 & 8, although I believe the 4 & 8 have a higher frequency; more suitable for guitar than bass. The Furman makes my 1971 CTS equiped Kustom 200-B sound from feeble to fabulous. If you don't have high quality speakers a good EQ is a more affordable way to compensate. I prefer parametrics over graphics, as there are no frequency gaps but this is all just my opinion.
 
#15
I agree with what's been said so far. If you like the Acoustic 360 preamp you'd probably also like the Viva Analog 360+. It's the same design in a much smaller package, and made with higher quality parts. JC the maker is great to deal with (no connection).

Acoustic made a really rare solid state rackmount preamp called the BP-10. If you can find one, check it out.

It's not vintage by most definitions, but I've always really liked the EBS rackmount preamps. I know of three different models. The first two had a grey face and the last (10'th anniversary model) was black face. I prefer the black face, because it had a certain amount of slight distortion which I thought was very musically useful. The EQ takes some getting used to. It's a boost only design with three semi-paramteric active filters (lo. mid, hi) and a fourth filter that acts like a variable level bright switch. If you can find one, try it.
 
#16
parsons said:
Sounds like you wanted it to do something that it wasnt supposed to do in the first place. Its a solid state preamp that was designed to keep your bass sounding like your bass, its not and wasnt designed to be a Sansamp. The EQ points on that pre are actually pretty useful if you understand how the tone stack in that unit works
Click to expand...

I monkeyed with that thing for several years trying to get a good tone... I just never could figure it out. I wasn't trying to use it as a sansamp, I was just trying to get a decent sound out of it. I never could.
 
#20
Yamaha had some great sounding preamps. I had a pb-1 (I foolishly sold it a while ago) But it was great sounding, kinda tubey and very warm. You can't get that tube breakup sounds but for anything clean, it sounded godly. I could get a great fingerstyle tone from it.The only issue i had with mine is that sometimes the power button would just refuse to work, i don't know if that's just my unit though.
 

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