Tube Preamps - What Do You Use and How Do You Utilize Them?

[Baloney Balderdash]

So who of you use one or more tube preamps (or pedals effective functioning primarily as tube preamps) as part of your setup, what do you use, and how do you utilize them?

 

 

Personally I love my EHX Black Finger, which is a tube driven optical compressor, that features two Electro-Harmonix 12AX7EH tubes (what this units came with from stock, but after trying out several other tube brands this is still my favorite, which I've put in pretty much any tube device I own utilizing 12AX7 preamp tubes), operating at proper high 300V plate voltage, that I have used as an always on part of my setup for the longest time.

 

Currently it functions primarily as a tube preamp, with just the slightest compression dialed in from the optical compressor circuit (beside of course the subtle compression that the tubes themself provides), which is to say a fairly moderate threshold with a relatively long attack time and a very low compression ratio, the input gain dialed up to where the input tube is driven to just on the verge of breakup, adding a really beautiful harmonic depth and complexity to my signal.

 

A fairly subtle effect, mind, that you only really notice when it is turned off, but it does really bring extra life, depth and harmonic complexity to my signal, and transform my tone from just sounding pretty great to an outright amazing sounding one.

 

And actually, rather than having it placed towards the end of my chain, as you usually otherwise probably would with a tube preamp, I use it as pretty much the first pedal of my setup, with just a Xvive Undulator tremolo placed in front of it, the latter never actually engaged and exclusively used for it's really effective buffer, as for some reason the Black Finger was designed with a rather low input impedance, I believe something like just 150kOhm or so.

 

I did experiment with placing the Black Finger later in my signal chain, but found placing all the way up front of it really works best for me and the rest of my setup, making it part of my base tone, fed to all following pedals in my setup, sort of effectively functioning as if it had been an onboard active preamp.

 

 

Here's the specific settings on my EHX Black Finger that I currently use:

 

Pre Gain (input gain/threshold (though as far as i understood somewhat interacting with the Compress control)) : Noon position (as said driving the input tube to just on the verge of breakup)

 

SQSH/Norm (Squash=long attack, high compression ratio/Normal=more subtle compression) : Normal mode

 

Lamp/LED (optical compression source, Lamp=longer attack time, more low end, fatter tone (contrary to what manual states the top end is compressed more and the low end less)/LED=shorter attack time, flatter response, more neutral tone : Lamp mode

 

Compress (compression ratio (though as far as i understood somewhat interacting with the Pre Gain control)) : 8 o'clock position (just a smidge above minimum position, minimum position translating to practically no signal going through the optical compression circuit at all (except for what the full 500kOhm resistance of the pot allows for), which is to say that my guess is that the setting I use would translate to something like a just 1.5:1 ratio or so)

 

Post Gain (output/make up gain/master volume) : Slightly above unity

 

 

And this is how it looks (this is actually a photo of the backup EHX Black Finger I recently bough, just in case something should ever happen to my old one beyond repair, the new one (well, used new old one, as these pedals unfortunately are out of production) a lot more pristine and clean looking than my old one that I use currently):

 

 

I should probably add that this is part of my main "amp-less" setup, with my basic "clean" tone, beside the Black Finger, also being composed of a subtle spring reverb, delivered by a patch on my Zoom B1Xon consisting of a really subtle plate reverb with a short pre-delay going into an emulation of a Fender type spring reverb, this being placed second to last in my signal chain, right before the NUX Melvin Lee Davis Preamp + DI that ends my signal chain (that is of course before my headphones or poweramp + FRFR PA speaker), using the Anguilar Tonehammer amp emulation that this pedal features, and an Ampeg SV212 cab IR simulation, which also comes stock with the pedal, with an added HPF set at 40Hz and a LPF set at just below 14kHz, as well as a subtle, relatively low gain, drive mixed with clean signal.

 

Also using this with my main instrument of choice at the moment, my just 28.6" scale 4 string Ibanez Mikro Bass, strung up to accommodate a G standard tuning, that is 3 half steps above regular 4 string bass E standard tuning.

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by Baloney Balderdash

[Franticsmurf]

I used to run a Marshall JMP1 valve pre-amp into the effects return of my Laney Richter 7 to bypass the Laney's pre-amp. The band I was in played rock and blues and it gave me a nice gritty sound. The JMP 1 has 99 memory slots and a midi interface enabling me to change settings - I used this mainly to vary the level of the effects in the loop. Later, I added a Zoom rack multi FX unit and had this under midi control too. Very versatile but it was all getting too heavy to cart around (as I'd got myself a hernia) I retired it in favour of a TCE BAM200 and a couple of pedals.

 

 

Recently I've been using an Eden Glowplug in the board which warms the sound up and is last in line before the amp. I don't like the sound of the Eden overdriven, but just before it begins to break up is a nice tone that I leave on all the time. It's a bit of a nuisance having to use a second power supply for the 15v it requires.

 

Before writing this reply, I went and dug out the JMP 1 and I'll be playing around with that this morning.