Phil Lesh101 wrote:What is so good about this Pre-amp?
It must be good! Because you have Scoob Going Bananas over it!
It's as much about what it ISN'T as about what it is. All of the dead people have always been serious audiophile gear heads. The over riding philosophy of all this has always been to get the best most transparent signal and sound possible. if the starting point is that Tone comes from the player 1st and the instrument 2nd then all you really want is to make that (the player and instrument) louder. It is also useful as the sound the player hears is the exact same sound that is being fed to the board and then out to the people.
What that means, in practice, is that the vast majority of their gear doesn't "SOUND like" anything. The Gas Amps/ Macs etc, are high wattage/ huge headroom class A type amps that give tons of power but have very little coloration of the sound. JBLs have always been known for coloring the sound much less than other speakers..
This preamp is very similar. While it does have tone controls, the "sound" of it flat is extremely transparent, only really imparting a bit of tube warmth to the signal. Using the tone/ parametric sparingly it really allows you to hear the Sound of the bass, and the tone from the player. Comparing it to a GK or say an Ampeg, that has a very distinct character it is night and day.