ACG EQ01 Filter Bass Pre-amp comments and quotes. Pre-amp comments and quotes.I now have a few pre-amp out so here a few comments from their new owners.
There is a review at the following link.
www.vintagebass.com/thedudepit/showthread.php?t=24369&page=2&highlight=filter+pre-amp
Another at.
www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=299738
alan, it was delivered this morning! i can't believe how fast it got here. it is installed, and sounds fantastic. i have a set of alembic activators in my fretless (this went into a fretted warwick fortress), so i had an idea of what to expect from a filter based pre, but your product is several steps ahead of the alembic model, so much so that it will take me awhile to explore the many options. thanks again!
m
Hi Alan,
well, I must say, I am really liking the preamp, I
have had it in the bass for about two months now. I
used it in the bass that I took on tour for a month.
It was good to only have the one bass with your preamp
for that time instead of being able to take other
basses to the gig. I was forced to get the most out of
it. I have to say it's an amazing sounding preamp, It
took some dialaing in in terms of balancing the
pickups out. I am still learing how to use it as well,
there is so much tonal variation. I am still trying to
wrap my head around the trebele stack, I find that
when I turn the bottom ring down the bass gets
brighter, and I can't really figure out what the top
trebele ring does. But over all I am very satisfied.
and I can't thank you enough for all your help.
hi alan,
i've finally got a real chance to put the new pre-amp through it's paces! i've just started a tour with the musical footloose, and i've already had some great comments from the sound guys about the tone on the fretless.
the review is in the pipeline but, of course, is running well behind schedule! mainly due to the fact that i've: 1. only really got to try out the bass properly in the last few weeks, and 2. starting a new show is always so time consuming.
all i can say is that i couldn't be more pleased with the sound, so much so that i'm seriously considering having one fitted to my parker fly to give it more versatility.
i'm going to be in edinburgh for a week from 16th april with footloose, it would be good to meet up if you're around, and you never know, the review might even be on the net by then!
talk soon,
d
review of A.C. Guitars bass pre-amp
hi, I'm new to talkbass but have been a member of bassworld in the u.k. for a while. I'd like to say that I have no affiliation with alan or with john east. I paid for the pre-amp and just want to share my thoughts on it. hope they're of some use.
I’ve had this preamp fitted to my 1989 Warwick thumb 5 string fretless for about 5 months now, though I’ve only really had the chance to use it “in anger” for the last seven or eight weeks. I promised Alan at a.c. guitars that I’d write a review of it for him as I was one of the first people in Europe to have one fitted. Unfortunately I did promise I’d have it ready in a month and as always I was being uselessly optimistic! (That was by way of an apology to Alan and to John East, the designer).
I think most of us have probably read the thread where the idea for a “Wal” style filter based tone control system has been discussed between Alan, John and various members of bassworld/talkbass, and, indeed, this is where I first heard about the idea.
My thumb has EMG pickups and always had a good full sound but I felt that it lacked the ability to growl in the way made popular by people like Pino Palladino; I certainly felt that there was more “wood” in there somewhere.
The fitting
The pre-amp was designed for a.c. guitars by John East, an electrical engineer/wizard who is based near oxford. The story goes that john had mentioned to Alan that he was toying with the idea of a filter based pre-amp and Alan said he would be interested in trying it out in his basses. Well, time passed (quite a lot of time, I believe) and eventually john admitted that he would probably never actually get round to finishing the pre-amp so Alan threw some money into the equation and commissioned john to make the pre-amp exclusively for a.c. guitars. (Good move Alan!!).
The pre-amp uses four stacked pots (which we’ll come to later) and my thumb only used three pots necessitating the addition of an extra hole in my beloved bass! This was my one real concern in the whole affair (no pun intended) but Alan put me in touch with john who lives about an hour away from me and he was good enough to arrange for a luthier to do the necessary. As long as you have the right number of “pot holes” on your bass you can fit the pre amp yourself as it has been designed so that no soldering is required.
The pre-amp
The controls are very intuitive, give it a few days and you’ll hardly think about it though the huge range of sounds will keep you twiddling for months!
The first pot is; inner knob – volume, outer knob – pick up pan. Nothing new there…
The next two can be thought of as (for each pick-up) inner knob – boost (0 - +12db), outer knob – frequency (70Hz. – 3kHz.) SORT OF…. These two controls are where the magic is and deserve a wider explanation. The frequency control is actually a low pass filter so when the control is fully counter clockwise only the very lowest frequencies are allowed to pass through and when fully clockwise the full spectrum is allowed through. The boost control puts a spike in just before the drop off point set on the low pass filter.
The final pot is; inner knob – boost (0 - +18db), outer knob – treble frequency (4kHz. – 10kHz.)Because the tone controls always let through low end but not always top, you can use this to compensate for any lack of treble.
In use
I described the two filter controls as frequency and boost earlier and that’s because this seems to be the easiest way of thinking about how to use them. If you set the boost quite high and sweep the frequency control it is a bit like a wah pedal but with a much greater frequency range; that may give you an idea of how much control there is over your sound (x2 of course, one for each pick-up).
As a quick start, I have found that what I tended to do was set the neck pick-up to just let through lower bottom end and use it as a sweepable bass tone control, then set the bridge pick – up to a higher frequency and use it as a sweepable mid tone control, this means that the pick up pan suddenly becomes the most powerful single knob tone control I have ever used, though this grossly simplifies the actual tone shaping at your disposal.
The range of tones is enormous, almost bewildering, and this brings me to one (very small) minus point. The tiniest movement of the frequency control, especially in the 500Hz to1kHz (ish) range makes an enormous difference to the sound (with suitable boost) and this means finding the right spot can be a bit fiddly. Having said that, this is simply a function of the enormous flexibility of the system, so I guess you can’t have your cake and eat it!
The treble control is also a lot more powerful than one would think. If I want to dial in a wal sound then I will have the treble boost off (I can only assume that the wal basses do not have this in their filter system), a fairly heavy pan to the bridge pickup and a fairly high boost in the mid range giving that classic honky/nasal pino style sound; but to get a different and more balanced sound just add a little top end and everything just seems to even out to a good standard usable sound, so a lot of knob twiddling is not required.
In conclusion
Just about any sound is available, from the lowest thumping reggae to the clankiest rickenbacker and beyond with never a hint of hiss or other noise; which with up to 18db of boost in the 4-10kHz range is remarkable, and I found that using less boost doesn’t just give less of whatever sound is set on the frequency control but seems to send you off in subtle new directions - I have never found a pickup pan to be so powerful! It’s a beautifully made bit of kit and very light on power consumption – eight shows a week and the battery lasted for over two months before dying on me!
This is the best £200 (just over $400 in the U.S. at the moment) that I have ever spent on sound, and it’s going to double soon as I intend to ask Alan for a second one for my parker fly bass!
I’m based in Bedfordshire (u.k.) but am currently up and down the country with the show footloose, so if anyone in the u.k. would like to hear and/or try this for themselves p.m. me. I’m sure we can meet up – it’s such a great bit of kit I think everyone should have one! hope that's of some use to someone, and that i haven't gone on too much!
cheers,
d
I installed it today and I'm in love the flexibly built into this preamp
is incredible. KP.
Hi Alan,
No worries, it'd be a bit silly to send some washers out here all the way from Scotland. :) I got the preamp installed last night without any problems. I'm still getting to know the sound. A couple initial thoughts/observations/questions:
- with the treble full down, and each filter full up and boosted, it results in a great old-school passive bass sound, I can get the classic J and P sounds pretty closely (my bass has two dual-coil pickups with a left/right/parallel coil switch for each). Bringing up the treble works perfectly there, it's like slowly changing from vintage pickups to the modern ones it has in it.
- with one pickup wide open and the other just lows, it's surprising what happens when you mix them. Going from the wide-open pickup to blended, the volume drops -- I had to think about it, then it made sense. The full-open pickup is providing most of the sound, and when you blend to the middle you're effectively turning that pickup down (and adding some lows from the other pickup).
- the neck pickup in dual-coil mode, with the filter boosted and set to about the 75% mark, results in an old Gibson hollow-body or Hofner type sound. I'd found this before using my Alembic Superfilter, but now I have that option at much closer reach.
TS
hi alan,
sorry, things have been crazy! will call you in the next few days, but, suffice to say, the pre-amp is amazing, so much better than i had ever hoped! i have not been able to try it with an amp yet so am still not sure of it's full capabilities but i think it's going to take a year just to try out all the different sounds at my disposal!
will phone soon, i promise.
dl
I installed it, sounds great so far, I am taking it to
the gig tonight, I will let you know how it goes...
here are some pics so far
H
Hi Alan,
i want you to know
that I am really knocked out by the preamp, and, only
one night of playing with the band will not give me a
total understanding of all the possibilities with your
preamp. I can't wait to spend a good deal of time with
it playing in live and studio situations so I can
explore the possibilities. I must say you really have
something here. It's not as Wal like as I thought it
would be, that may be largely due to the F Bass
pickkups as well, but it's just as good. there is a
lot of depth here to explore. I am so glad I decided
to put it in my F Bass so I could try it out now...
I have to say that this is great preamp. It will take me a long time to find all the tones, but it's great that there are so many good ones! The way it interacts with my bass is really extraordinary. I am using Bartolini triple coils and with this preamp the differences between all the settings (series/parallel and either coil in series with the humcanceller coil) is way more pronounced than it had been before. Instead of boosting low end resulting in mud of different flavors, I can get the subsonic bottom with clarity tones that I knew this bass had all along.
Great job! I think that another one will be in my future (although probably not too quickly if the dollar continues to be so weak).
Thanks for everything!
E
Well i have only this evening received my acg custom build http://www.acguitars.co.uk/Gallery/104/ so my initial thoughts on the pre amp are wow.
Iv been playing with it for about 3 hours reading all about it adjusting things when they suddenly make sense to me and kind of repeating that process for along time. Im not really the play for 3 hours kinda guy either so this bass and pre amp are something very special. Ortho my fingers are rather raw as i swaped back to steels tonight as well.
Iv been able to find a huge array of tones and sounds i first went looking for the tones im used to found the ritter, my old spector euro, a nice jazz sound and deffinatly a musicman tone. Then tones of aditional veriations and slighty different characteristics that can be dialed in.
Pretty versatile pre amp. I think its fantastic i was abit sceptical about it to begin with as i have never even attempted to use or been near a filtered pre amp before but im very very impressed with this from alan at ACG and john east.
The pre amp just compliments the basses tones fantasticly its got a warm deep tone that sings. The sustain on it and mids are lovely as well something that will really cut through and have a huge presence in the mix i think. I will hopfuly do abit of recording if my mate brings round his lovely box of tricks and get some samples up. Ortho dont hold your breath as its bloody hard to get music students to get up and do anything i mean they dont even go to uni...
Just because im on about my acg i have to mention the bass as well its stunning, its the best bass i have ever played. This isnt from a bias either i was quite happy to keep hold of my ritter classic if it had something the acg didnt acheive but im now selling the ritter as i just dont need to have it around with the acg with me.
The build quality is fantastic and the woods are just brilliant.
As people maybe able to tell im very happy with the preamp and the bass.
Got to thank alan for all the help during the build as well he has been fantastic.
Glad to see others are getting on so well with his pre amp i think its a great idea and something that little bit different and versatile behond need. Also the wah-wah effect you can get is most imusing.
PS
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