OT: opamp Bass preamp for recording?

[C Bradley]

I just bought a Yamaha MG10/2, and my P-bass doesn't sound all that good when I plug straight into the board. I bought the bass, but never bought an amp for it. :roll: I've been playing it at low volumes through my DIY Marshall with 1 x 15" speaker cab on the clean channel.

What I want to do is use a dual opamp like a 1458 or a TL082 and create a clean preamp with bass, middle, & treble controls, as well as a volume control. I'd run this straight into one of the line inputs of my mixer (-10 dbu). I'm not too familiar with bass preamps, but I seem to recall that some of them have hi-mid and lo-mid controls for a 4-band EQ. That may be an option, depending on how small the circuit board is. I'd like to try and fit it all inside a Hammond 1590BB (large size?) box. I'm not opposed to using a power transformer and building a 15V or higher power supply, but it will take up a lot of space inside the chassis and introduce noise I'll have to deal with.

[ejbasses]

Hi. try looking at the boss FA-1 then replace the EQ section with a three band EQ from albert kreuzer's preamp design. I just built a FA-1 using the plans from the Ustomp website (thanks steve) and it sounds good. I think even the Stock FA-1 will sound good on bass. I think this will fit on a pedal and will run on 9V. I plan on doing something similar to this once i get some parts.

Any body else please put their suggestions like switches and other mods

[Dave_B]

Have you tried Don Tillman's preamp?  http://www.till.com/  It's extremely simple to construct, and it helped the direct sound of my Ricky.  I housed it in a box, not my guitar FWIW.

There's also the 360+.  I've not built it, but it's got some fans so I've added it to my long list.  http://www.lynx.bc.ca/~jc/pedals360.html

[majormono]

I guess by "straight into board" you mean DI (if not it's no wonder it sounds bad ;-)?
The problem is that good Bass preamps are rather complicated and would need at least sweepable mids (that's why I play Bass by DI and use the parametric EQ on my board) if you ask me.
On the other hand I'm lazy and once build a super simple preamp with just a buffer and customized BMP-style tonestack which does the job not too bad, especially combined with a bassified OS compressor (which I put in the same box).

It's a one-trick pony but when it fits it's nice.
http://www.grol.de/diy/Basspre.gif

Well, I'm no real bassist but for me it does the occasional job...

[hairyandy]

Believe it or not, one of the best DI bass preamps that I've ever used is the Hughes & Kettner Tubeman.  There's got to be a schematic for that thing floating around someplace...

[seanm]

I use a SansAmp Bass Driver DI when I go straight to a mixer. I have never seen a schematic for one however.

[David]

The problem is that good Bass preamps are rather complicated and would need at least sweepable mids (that's why I play Bass by DI and use the parametric EQ on my board) if you ask me.

Say what?   :?:  :?:  :?:  :?:  :?:

A bass preamp is no more complicated than a guitar preamp!  You set the filtering on the input differently to account for the lower frequencies, that's all.  It doesn't NEED sweepable mids, but the capability is handy to have...

[C Bradley]

I guess by "straight into board" you mean DI (if not it's no wonder it sounds bad ;-)?

Doh!  :x  I forgot about my Behringer Ultra-DI box.  :roll: I tried it last night and it made a world of difference. I think it'll do the job, along with the 3-band EQ on the mixer. The +48V phantom power feature is nice too; it gives me another 9V for my pedals. :wink:

Brain-fart.  :oops:

[majormono]

Well if you got excellent Equipment that sounds spot-on you really don't need parametric mids - but my real life experience is that you need it to counter the rumble in the lower mids (300-500Hz).
But that's just me and I have to admit that my bass is crappy, if you can go without - congratulations ;-).
I really love the SVP Preamp I had some time ago, mhhhh!