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Bass upgrades. 2 band or 3 band EQ?


fretmeister
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I’m thinking of swapping out the preamp in my Ibanez EHB and a thought occurred.

Even in a bass with a 3 band I hardly ever use the mid control other than as an extension of the treble to knock down the high end.

 

On a 3 band the Q of the treble is usually narrower so to get a proper “passive tone down” sound they both have to come down a bit, whereas the wider Q on a 2 band doesn’t need that.

 

 So… with that in mind.

 

Im thinking of Aguilar. The one that cuts and boosts.

 

Anyone done that to an EHB?

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Do you ever cut your EQ or only boost it ?

 

If you only boost it, than go for the best ever Aguilar, the OBP-1, and it's a FET transistors preamp, which are way more musical. You'll also have the option of a passive path with a tone control.

 

Best of both worlds.

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1 hour ago, Hellzero said:

Do you ever cut your EQ or only boost it ?

 

If you only boost it, than go for the best ever Aguilar, the OBP-1, and it's a FET transistors preamp, which are way more musical. You'll also have the option of a passive path with a tone control.

 

Best of both worlds.

 

I do cut the lows sometimes if the room is a bit crap or the stage is a hollow sports hall tonal disaster.

 

I was thinking about the OBP-2 for that purpose.

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The beauty of mid-boost is all about getting yourself heard...finding the sweet spot tonally and boosting that; it may make your bass sound horrific in isolation, but remember you're not losing the lows and highs, you're appending it, finding and filling a frequency pocket nobody is generally sitting in.  That said, in isolation, I just keep the mids flat.

 

I love John's kit.

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This probably isn’t helpful, but I generally prefer a 2 band preamp on a bass.
 

I control the mids by picking the right bass for the job in the first place (P vs J vs Stingray), using pickup selection where I have a 2 pickup bass, or changing where I place my right hand when plucking. YMMV. 

 

I use John East preamps wherever I can. My Jazz has a East J-Tone (2 band) and my ‘Stingray’ has a 2 band East MMSR. (The Celinders I have both came with tweakable Greengrove 2 band preamps.) 

 

However John doesn’t have a flat 2 band just on it’s own, the BTB 01 (https://www.east-uk.com/product/btb-01/?v=79cba1185463) which could be perfect for this uses the Bass/Treble section from the J-Retro, which has a little too much bass boost baked in for my taste. So you either need to ask him to make a custom, buy the highly tweakable Uni Pre and omit installing the mid, or use a J-Tone. Or go Aguilar as you planned, lol

Edited by funkle
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I’ve been looking at a lot of pickups and preamps lately, as an upgrade for my Warwick. The two I keep coming

back to are the Nordstrand blade pickups and ten John East Uni pre. Obviously completely different bass you’re looking to upgrade, but just suggesting stuff worth checking out. On a side note, I’m loving the look of those Ibanez EHB’s 

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In an ideal world I'd be putting EMGs in it. 

 

Unfortunately EMG only make their own dimension soapbars and don't do an easy drop in version for Barts like just about everyone else does these days.

I'm a massive fan of their J and JX pickups but the dimensions are wrong in all directions. Would need a lot of routing and a scratchplate to make it look tidy.

 

Shame really. Sometimes I do wonder why companies make it difficult to buy their stuff. Nordy, SD, Aguilar etc all give the option to have an EMG or a Bart sized soapbar.

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What is the problem you have with the preamp now that you are trying to fix? The preamp in the EHB seems fine to me, other than it being the other way round to my john east in my shuker. And if all you want is a treble cut you could just wire up a tone control and just have the preamp flat?

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