A good Bass Guitar Pre?

Hi,
I was using a friends Augilar (sp?) bass DI the other day to lay down some tracks and it sounded AWESOME! Anybody got any good simple designs for something like that? I am right now working on the G9 and wondering if that will give me what I'm looking for?

Thanks for the tips!

Joel
:guinness:

The Alembic preamp from many years ago is highly regarded, and it's essentially a copy of the Fender Showman preamp.

http://www.alembic.com/prod/f2b.html

The Alembic pre is indeed the same basic stuff as the Showman, or for that matter the Twin, or most blackface Fender preamps. Since you can match it to a power amp w/ some damping, it can be much more useful than most Fender amps in regard to bass.

There is also the Hamptone Jfet stuff, which as an instrument DI is reportedly on par with Avalon and such. I gotta cook one of those up sometime.

Bear

I'm a little old-fashioned and grumpy about bass sounds - I think good, well-maintained passive basses (Fenders!) sound much better than basses with onboard preamps and active pickups. Little things like live strings and making sure the intonation is correct can do much more for the overall sound of a track than an out-of-tune bass with a great preamp. I guess it's kind of obvious that good instruments sound better in the song than bad ones from the start, but I see a lot of really crappy instruments played by people who ought to know better. There also doesn't seem to ba much correlation between how expensive a bass is and how good it sounds in a track. That's really the point. Not how does the bass sound, but how does the track sound? I think bass is a little different in that respect from other instruments. If the bass sound is pulling your attention to itself and away from the record, it's wrong. And a really great Fender doesn't need a preamp, just a good passive direct box.

Sorry, end of rant.

:guinness: :sam:

How do these compare the aguilar. anybody know?

Joel

hey joel-

I have an aguilar DI box, all thats in there is a jensen and a 12ax7, I was actually using it tonight, its about the most open sounding DI I have ever used, sounds like an amp... I can try to snap a photo of the board if I have time, I just started a record today, so things are really insane for me...

I would think though, if you could just present the right load on the pickups, match the input to a 12ax7 and use that to efficiently drive a jensen balancing transformer, you'd be well more than halfway there in regards to the aguilar, theres really not a lot happening in there, I was really suprised when I opened it the first time.

dave

I use my G9 as a bass pre-amp. Sounds excellent to my ears. Nice warm, round bottom......

I like a 70's P bass through it best......passive....though I've had good results with a modern active jazz bass as well.

Ric

If the bass sound is pulling your attention to itself and away from the record, it's wrong.

Click to expand...

Amen. GREAT advice.

Soundguy-
I'd love to see the insides of that!!!
Joel
:guinness:
:green:

does the HVTP2 version of the Hamptone deliver the same quality for Bass?

G9 in the pipeline, so will find out soon(er or later)

Best bass sound I've ever heard is a P-Bass through a Portaflex. It's a popular combination, with good reason.

Here in our studio, the G9 is extremely popular for bass. So much, in fact, that we are thinking of making a "commercial" Gyraf product with just one G9-stage, no input transformer, to be used as a DI only. This would be G15 when we get around to that...

Jakob E.

[quote author="tony dB"]does the HVTP2 version of the Hamptone deliver the same quality for Bass?
[/quote]

Scott said in the original TO article that he prefered the JFET pre for DI bass, when he had to DI, probably due to tighter bass.

Bear

How about this http://www.runoffgroove.com/flipster.html
or you could just do this http://www.runoffgroove.com/fetzervalve.html and modify some of the values to match the Alembic preamp.

Here are the photos of my DB900. Nothing special JT-DB-E Jensen, Sovtek 12AX7, a few resistor and capacititors :idea: .

[quote author="gyraf"]Here in our studio, the G9 is extremely popular for bass. So much, in fact, that we are thinking of making a "commercial" Gyraf product with just one G9-stage, no input transformer, to be used as a DI only. This would be G15 when we get around to that...

Jakob E.[/quote]

Jakob, just out of pure curiosity, why would you have it without a input transformer?

..because the input transformer would be of no use, as it is bypassed when the Hi-Z instrument input is plugged in. You won't find an input transformer with an impedance high enough to work well with instrument-types of signal..

I'd keep the output transformer for sure, though!

Jakob E.

of course!! Sorry for the daft question. :0) thanx

it's all in the fingers man! :twisted:

None of gear-slutting will give you a good sound unless you sort out that fingerstyle

I have to disagree with the ones who purport an all or nothing approach to recording. Certainly no ammount of virtuosity can overcome a piece of crap instrument, and no golden instrument can overcome an inept musian. As in all things, a ballance must be achieved. Now, my personal preference for studio recording, passive bass direct to the board.

As for a preamp, I always prefer the sound of the larger (6SN7/6SL7) octal triodes to the 12a*7 variety. They are easy to use and still available.