J-Retro output level

[landwomble]

Hi All,
I've got a Fender MIJ 70 RI from the mid 90s. I fitted a John East J-Retro about 15 years ago along with a Badass II bridge.
I've just downsized my amp to a TC Electronics BG250 208 which doesn't have an input gain control - it has passive and active switched input.
With the preamp on, the volume is a little high for passive, and a little low for active.
The J-Retro does have pickup output volume which is currently at the factory 70% volume (i.e. default on the pots inside the cavity).

Q: is there any practical difference between me either winding down the output slightly and using the passive input, or winding it up slightly and using the active input? The J-Retro is powered by 9V rather than 18 if it makes a difference!

Cheers
Ric

[rosco]

I was reading some of john's technical manuals recently (my valenti has a u-retro installed), and he suggests that you should treat your j-retro/u-retro volume control very much like a fader on a mixing desk, i.e. because of the quality of the circuitry and the fact the active signal will be buffered, turning up your volume control to 70% rather than 100% should solve the issue of the amp sounding too hot in passive mode, whilst preserving the tonal quality. Whether you decide to boost the individual pick preamps or not is up to yourself, either method should achieve the results you're after for this particular tc combo. If you encounter the same problem again in active mode (I.e. Too hot after pickup preamp boostage), just back off the volume knob a tad on the bass again.

I have to admit, I couldn't handle the absence of a gain/pre knob on my amp, that's far too little control over headroom for my liking (especially if you're running an old passive bass straight into it!)!

[MoonBassAlpha]

I always liked to balance the flat level of the active circuit to the passive level so if the preamp failed for whatever reason I wouldn't need to faff about too much with levels on the amp to stay in the game. I find with my U-Retro, I can't turn the pots on the preamp down far enough for the levels to be at parity, for the same setting of the guitar volume knob. That's running at 9 Volts too, though the voltage has less to do with gain than headroom, I believe.

[fingerz]

Hello,

Using the passive or active input on your amp shouldn't have any practical difference on tone, it's simply a level difference between the two. I had a very gentle active pre, and a j retro too which I always plugged through the passive input on my amp (Thunderfunk).
If it was me, I would lower the gain of the pre, as mentioned above you will not have a huge difference in level then between active and passive (though there will always be some), and use the passive input with a touch more gain.

The only case where you might find a difference is directly recording the bass or directly going into a PA where an engineer might request more output from you. In which case you could always turn up your Retro gain control. I think going past 70% gain is not the best idea with those pre amps from the comment above. Great Pre's and if you did have any direct questions, you could always ask John directly. He's a fountain of knowledge and happy to help people get the best out if his products.