pre-amp for 386/ruby/little gem

[letsgocoyote]

i want to make a little gem or similar 386 with a 3 band eq.  i want to use the fender tone stack but i hear this causes some signal loss.  if i combine a clean boost with the fender tonestack before a 386 based mini amp should that work ok?  or will a booster drive the 386 too hard and make it distort too much.  i dont want to lose any clean tones that are available from the 386.

more specifically i think i would jsut run the booster+tonestack into a smokey type based amp where the amp has no volume control, and jsut use the volume on the booster circuit to control the level.

or am i better off making the booster+tonestack combo run into something different like tim escobedos class a power amp?  or would that be much too quiet?  id like to get similar output to the ruby/little gem, if i went this route

thanks

[Ben N]

Do a Search--this question has been covered quite thoroughly. Basically, you can sandwich any passive tone stack between the two halves of a dual opamp (preferably jfet input for high impedance), and it should work well. Specific examples of this abound, here and elsewhere (Google). The ROG Tonemender should make an excellent front end for your 386 amp. You can also take a look at the schematic for any small Fender solid state amp, like the Frontline series. Just go easy on the voltage gain--it wont take much to overdrive the 386. You may want to do that, but the main objective of preamping on those amps is buffering the low impedance input. How much gain will depend to some extent on which 386 chi you choose and what voltage you run it on.