John East P-Retro preamp

[Rich]

[b]Mcnach's review from [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=132430"]this thread[/url]:[/b]

I received the P-Retro preamp and installed it... a pretty easy install, as always. A tiny bit more involved, but I mean *tiny*. There is a paper strip containing four thin wires that you have to prebend and make sure the thin pins slot in their connectors without bending them in the process, which is only marginally fiddly. I had a bit of a problem with it in my haste to get it done in time for a little live session I had, but it was easy to figure it out and John agreed to send me a new strip wire bit so that I make sure I have a solid connection... as always, customer service from John East is fantastic!

No soldering whatsoever involved, which is nice if you just want to install it and play.

The fit inside the Squier was perfect.
It may seem a bit of an imbalance to install this preamp in a Squier, but in my opinion these CV series are pretty nice basses, and I'm really enjoying mine. So there

It was nice to see that the cavity in the Squier was pretty neat, and covered with shielding paint with a wire anchored in it. I mean, it's as basic as it gets (I'd prefer copper shielding, but...) and for years and years the normal thing was to find totally unshielded instruments, not just Squier, Fender too. My standard procedure for a new Strat was always open it up and shield it. Glad to see they're taking a bit of care now even on "lowly" Squiers. Better late than never!



I didn't take any pictures of the preamp itself, I forgot all about it and it takes so little to install that before you realise, you're done.
There are enough pictures on the net anyway if you need to se what it looks like.

But I did remember to take one picture.
Well, we have all seen those "modified" Sue Ryder P-basses with tortoiseshell pickguards etc... I wondered what it'd be like if I put a SR pickguard on teh Squier



I thought it looked pretty cool

Anyway, I installed it, and it looks like this:



I didn't install the led (battery and charging indicator) bezel on the pickguard, so the led is tucked inside.

I haven't yet played much with the various configurations:
you can select level of the bass boost switch with an intrnal trim pot, and the bass frequency with a set of dip switches. Also the bright switch. They're all internal, but easily accessible from the side if you just remove a few screws and lift the pickguard a bit. I just used it so far with the defaults and I'm pretty impressed.

It took me a bit to get my head around the way it works, because it's very different to most other preamps, but once you play wth it a bit it just "clicks" and makes intuitive sense.

What I like about this preamp is that it's not trying to make the P-bass sound like something else. In fact, the core of the tone is a passive circuit, just like the original (one nice point is you get two different capacitors to try... again no soldering, just pull one out and push the other in). So what I do is select the "ballpark" of the sound I want, passively. On P-basses I seem to use the tone control a lot, and I like the results. The P-retro seems to just want to add a bit of "tweakability" to that. Or a lot of it, actually, but not detracting from a recognisable P-bass sound.

So, once I get the tone control where I want it, engage the preamp. That gives you a little clean boost if the active tone control is set flat (a centre detent shows you where that position is).

Now, I can do two things, I can simply add a bass boost (the gain and frequency are preselected through the internal trim pot and dip switches... so you need to play around with that to figure what settings you want. The defaults worked well enough, but I will certainly investigate further) or start playing with the mids control.

The control is a two-pot with concentric knobs. The bottom one allows you to select the frequency, the top one cus/boosts mids.
Well, that's the simple way to imagine it and it helps me decide what I want to do with it. In fact the preamp blurb states that clockwise, it boosts mids (based on the freq selected with the bottom part of the concentric knob). In the middle it does nothing. Anticlockwise it boosts bass and treble, rather than simply cutting mids, what it seems is that it may produce that effect by boosting outside the area of frequency selected. To my ears is mostly bass bosst what I hear, more than treble.
So you can use that to get a scooped sound and adjust the sound with the frequency sweep control. But the sweep is so wide, from very high to very low frequencies, that it's much more than a "scooped sound generator". If the frequency selected is high... it essentially will act as a bass boost mostly, and viceversa you can enhance the clank of the P-bass if you select a high frequency (although that's more effectively done using the mid boost).

It seems complex in words... but it's really intuitive when you try it, and you can go from a dull (in a nice way) vintage type of sound with strong warm mids, to a punk/metal friendly bright sound, to a reggae ultra deep tone... very easily.

And they all sound like a P-bass!

I didn't use it on Saturday night as I was still trying to get to grips to its functions, having just installed it, so I took my trusty Stingray away (with a John East MMSR preamp... but I have to insist: I have no connection with John East, othr than I really like his designs!). On Sunday I did use it at a jam session, and that's where I learnt to use it and fell in love with it.

It's not cheap, but it does what it does very well.

So, these were my initial impressions... now I have to play a bit with the multiple choices of frequency and bass boost levels to fine-tune it for my liking... but it's already very nice.

Glad I bought this.

[Christophano]

Good review.

Nice one bruva. :-)