What were the best vintage solid state preamps?

[chadds]

Raven Labs Universal Stereo Instrument Preamp. Built by Steve Rabe, founder of SWR.

Nice! If this was a game show.......

 

[Bassmec]

Ya, I thought his Sunn rig was tubes too, but it was all solid state Sunn Coliseums.

Yup! but the pre amps where made by a chap called Peter Struven and where called Stramp.

Oh well I remember 1977 warm beer, african cigarettes and oxen at the speakeasy st margrets st.

 

[JimmyM]

Geez, how many preamps did he use? Looks like maybe 8 of them!

 

[wmheilma]

Solid state, eh?
I really liked the Yamaha PB-1 that I had back in the early 80's. The other solid state amp I wish I had back was a Seymour Duncan 400x2. The direct out recorded really well.

 

[yorkbass]

I just bought one locally for $100.00. (Intersound IVP preamp) I had all the pots cleaned and checked for $50. It sounds terrific. I had one originally back in 1981-1987. The parametric is terrific and I have used it with both a vintage Yamaha P2200 and P2100 through an Ampeg SVT410HLF. I like the clean tone selection though. The "tube" selector is really a FET setup and sounds nasty in a bad way. Not my idea of great tone. $275 for preamp and a P2100. Plenty of power unless you are playing thrash metal in a stadium!

 

[solodb]

My vote for the best solid state pre is Yamaha PB-1. I played through a Yamaha B100-iii once at our local blues club and it totally blew me away! I learned later that amp has the exact same circuitry as the PB-1 coupled to a very loud and strong 100 watt amp that drove 2 15" cabs like no tomorrow. Another strong contender would be the Ampeg BT-15/25 and ST series; the early Ampeg solid state line is kind of obscure but they really sound warm and round like Ampeg was trying to duplicate their famous tube sounds found in the B-15, V4B and SVT lines.

 

[Lowbrow]

If that PB-1 in any way resembled the circuit contained in Yamaha's B-100 bass head, I'd say that it's probably pretty great... that amp took me through about 15 years, and was often referred to as the SS amp that thought it was a tube amp. Sounded great with almost any cab... I had the original 2x15 and late in its life I had the B-100 running two vintage Sunn 2x15s loaded with D140Fs. Sweet.. heavy as an anchor and sweet.