Which pre-amp for K&K pure mini?

[G_Sin]

Originally Posted by kaos

I have the pure preamp, and the redeye. The Redeye sounds better in my opinion. I often choose the pure preamp when going to open mics where I don't have control over PA EQ ... some of these guys have crazy EQ settings. With the pure pre I get bass/mid/treble settings to make last minute adjustments.

Bob.

Sounds like this info is spot on the money in terms of what the OP was looking for.

[jseth]

I have the PURE XLR preamp for a couple of reasons...

By far the most important is that I was not satisfied with the tone I could get with "just" the K&K PW Mini straight into, either my AER Compact 60/2 or my Bose L1 system through the Bose T1 Tonematch gizmo...

No matter what I did to the eq settings, I could NOT get anything close to a sound I felt was usable or even partially representative of the Goodall in which the pickup is installed... and that T1 unit has all sorts of ways to tweak tone, but, even with that, I couldn't "get there".

One of our sponsors had a sale on the PURE XLR preamps, so I got a new one for around $80 (!!! Thanks, again Todd / Fitness1 for the head's up!)... immediately, the pickup sounded perfect through either system of mine with little or NO eq required!

Also, I can use the phantom power aspect of the XLR PURE instead of a battery, which appeals to me greatly; one less thing to worry about!

I have heard about too many players who have broken the clip off that belt-pak version of the PURE to even consider getting one of those; plus, I play sitting down nearly all the time, so I didn't need the mobility provided by the belt-pak preamp.

I must say I am intrigued by the Red-Eye, however... 90+% of the comments I've heard about it is VERY positive! I know there are others that work well with the K&K, too...

Good luck with your choice!

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by pgilmor

I do need a preamp. If I plug straight in to the amp the mids on this guitar are way, way too much. Need to find a way to dial them back. I don't have my own gear, so it's house system all the way. This is an open mic kind of scenario.

Hi pg

A good one (and good value) is the Fishman Platinum Pro Stage ($120). I loaned mine to our worship leader when his ParaDI died. He used it for several weeks while he was auditioning preamps. He ultimately decided on the Baggs Venue (another great preamp - $300).

More features in a little box than others, can be powered by phantom from the mixer (if you are feeding a house PA), and it's durable. I carry one in my Voyage-Air back pocket for quick gigging, and use it at gigs where others don't have a preamp as a loaner.

It doesn't color the tone noticeably, durable, quiet, quite small, low cut can be adjusted, and really is a hidden gem among mono preamplifiers.

The sweepable mid is a plus for unusual settings, and it sounds as good as any of my ParaDI preamps. I don't need compression and foot switch boost, or built in tuner, so this is most of the features of the Platinum Pro at half the price.

The issue with the RedEye is you have no control over the lows, or the mids in any predictable fashion. It's a great point-n-shoot preamp, that does a nice job till you hit a situation where you need more control. If you always play great rooms and systems, it's a viable choice.

You certainly don't need to use a K&K preamp. I own/use over half dozen brands of preamps which other players use when we do PA work or gigs where people show up with a guitar with a K&K & no preamp. We show them the sound with and without and we've never had anyone ask us to unhook the preamp.

The other useful feature is that the direct box functions are often built into a good preamp (¼" line level and balanced XLR outputs). This makes interfacing with other systems easy and quick.

Hope you find the preamp of your dreams…

[otavio]

Anyone here heard FMR RNP(Really Nice Preamp) powering passive pickups like KK Pure Mini ?
It´s a very transparent dual class A channel preaamp.
I have one but i dont have passive pickups and i´m thinking in get one(PURE MINI) to put in my 0018(building).


Heres a review of it


http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul03/articles/fmr.asp

[Marty C]

Hi Pgilmor,
I really must apologize for hijacking your tread. Your question has been my question for the last few weeks. I, just like you, want to get better sound from my k & k mini. Not that it sounds bad, just has a few times in different venues and I had no control. Played in a few churches where the sound guys were great and it never sounded better. However, played in a few churches where the sound guys were there to "turn on the PA" and didn't know much about any EQ or levels. In cases like that, it sounded horrible. Then, there is the PA from a few playing buddies that sound great with their UST, but not so good with my k & k. Just looking for the best option to make on the fly changes.

My apologies again.

Marty

[pgilmor]

Marty, no worries. The more people that find this thread useful the better! And thanks to everyone for all the great suggestions that seem to cover a plethora of scenarios. Great info!!

[G_Sin]

I am considering getting a TC Play Acoustic as a preamp. Obviously, a little more spendy than some other options, but also gives a TON of other useful features for both guitar and voice.

[Br1ck]

When I called Fire Eye, I talked to the owner and asked him why such a limited EQ section, and he said because no one bothered to design a really linear gain stage. With a linear gain stage, you don't need to make up for gain stage deficiencies, so couple that with a high quality transformer, the correct input impedance for piezos, and an effects loop, you have what you need. Amps and boards have all the EQ you need.

Asked why the treble control and he said that was the dead string knob. Fire Eye was started because Austin musicians, at first fiddle players, were asking for something that wasn't out there.

So take the proverbial open mic setup. You plug a quarter inch cord into a board. The impedance is not optimal so your piezo sounds harsh and treblely. If you have a pre with all kinds of EQ, you don't have time to tweak it anyway.

Run a RedEye and an XLR cable and you are good to go. If the host looks at you with that deer in the headlights look, you can use the quarter inch effects out and sound better but not as good. This works if your battery goes dead too.

[travisbrown]

Headway EB-2 works great with the K&K Pure minis. I use one when I don't want to haul around the rack rig.

[maxtheaxe]

I have 4 guitars with K&K PWMs (Taylor 412K, Larrivee L-03, Larrivee L-10 and a Yamaha LL16-12) and I figured the logical thing to do was to get a K&K Pure XLR Mach II. In particular, the notch filter on this preamp does a very nice job of attenuating that hot mid sound that is the source of a lot of criticism of K&Ks. Couple of mine were a bit problematic because of those mids, or in the case of my 12-string, a big boomy WOOF. It works kinda like a parametric EQ and allows you to home in on troublesome freqs and dial them out.

I also have LR Baggs Element USTs on a couple guitars (Gibson J-15 and a Larrivee DV-10K) and this preamp works real nice with them too, although I have to change my settings quite a bit compared to the K&Ks.

[Gypsyblue]

Originally Posted by G_Sin

Lots of love for the Red-Eye here. Haven't used any myself, but been paying quite a bit of attention to this question.

The RedEye is my fave. Automatically makes my guitars sound great. Has only a treble control for tone but that's the beauty of it. Your PA board tone controls should handle the rest of your tone tweaking needs.

I use the RedEye Twin and it has two channels. If I only have one guitar plugged into it, when I switch to the unused channel I get silence. So I use the channel switching footswitch like an on/off switch.

I like the sound I get using the RedEye better than the sound I got using Baggs or K&K preamps.

[J Patrick]

...i too am a fan of Redeyes....that single treble control is the most useful knob on any piece of gear i've ever used...as mentioned by Gypsyblue you have eq at the board or amp you're using so cutting or boosting bass mids and highs is somewhat redundant on a preamp....that single treble control on the Redeye finds just right balance between warmth and crispiness that you need depending on your preference...it does it quickly and easily....the boost feature is a plus and the connectivity while simple covers all the bases...

I already had a PADI, so I use that with my K&K. I find a slight cut at 1.6 smooths out the mids.

[sublro]

oK, i'm going to outline what i think has been a major breakthrough for me with the k&k.

IvE had the k&k pwm in several guitars with mixed results over the years. Just recently ive come back to it for a number of reasons. At its best it can be just about the ideal pickup - sonically wonderful, low maintenance, clean unobtrusive install etc, but also can wind up almost unusable in certain situations, either because of the specifics of the guitar/installed position its in, or the sound situation its in on a given night or even a given moment.

Ive used a bunch of different preamps (PADI, Pure XLR, fishman pro platinum, redeye, Ultrasound, you name it) and Ive never quite gotten the consistecy i needed, until now. Ive discovered something important that to me was the missing element, and im now really really loving the K&K pickup the way ive always wanted to.

So what's the preamp and the new discovery? The preamp is a headway edm1, and the discovery is that, in additioan to the usual 3band eq, it has (as some other preamps and also some pa channels do for that matter) a "HIGH PASS FILTER" that you can set, to completely eliminate all sound below whatever frequency you set.

Before, i was always at the mercy of tone controls that only allowed me to dial out specific bass frequencies, when the reailty is that on a given guitar, with the pickup installed in a given location AND MOST IMPORTANTLY in the ever-changing dynamics minute to minute of volume, room eq, speaker placement, movement of the guitar vis a vis speaker placement, competing frequencies from other instruments etc etc etc, there are often MULTIPLE, VARIABLE bass frequencies that need reduction in order to tame the varying problems with lowmid tubbiness and/or feedback that ive sometimes struggled with.

This is coupled with an important epiphany ive had, which is that amplified acoustic guitar sound almost always has more bass in it than is needed in order to realistically reproduce a natural acoustic sound through an amp or PA.

So in short, this presmp dials out, to whatever degree i choose, the full (variable) set of (unneeded) bass frequencies that are almost always the genesis of the sonic problems ive had with th k&k, leaving just the "sounds like my guitar only louder" that has always attracted me to this pickup. I'm honestly not sure how much of the GREAT sound I'm enjoying is due to this particular preamp or whether mostly its just the k&k doing its usual great job and the headway's big contribution is just the highpass filter knob. Dont really care i guess.

Whatever you get, youll almost surely want to also be able to crank down the mids, which are the other known frequency issue for this pickup.

Still early in the going with this preamp, but the early indicators are very positive. Hope this is helpful.

[Andy Howell]

Originally Posted by sublro

oK, i'm going to outline what i think has been a major breakthrough for me with the k&k.

IvE had the k&k pwm in several guitars with mixed results over the years. Just recently ive come back to it for a number of reasons. At its best it can be just about the ideal pickup - sonically wonderful, low maintenance, clean unobtrusive install etc, but also can wind up almost unusable in certain situations, either because of the specifics of the guitar/installed position its in, or the sound situation its in on a given night or even a given moment.

Ive used a bunch of different preamps (PADI, Pure XLR, fishman pro platinum, redeye, Ultrasound, you name it) and Ive never quite gotten the consistecy i needed, until now. Ive discovered something important that to me was the missing element, and im now really really loving the K&K pickup the way ive always wanted to.

So what's the preamp and the new discovery? The preamp is a headway edm1, and the discovery is that, in additioan to the usual 3band eq, it has (as some other preamps and also some pa channels do for that matter) a "HIGH PASS FILTER" that you can set, to completely eliminate all sound below whatever frequency you set.

Before, i was always at the mercy of tone controls that only allowed me to dial out specific bass frequencies, when the reailty is that on a given guitar, with the pickup installed in a given location AND MOST IMPORTANTLY in the ever-changing dynamics minute to minute of volume, room eq, speaker placement, movement of the guitar vis a vis speaker placement, competing frequencies from other instruments etc etc etc, there are often MULTIPLE, VARIABLE bass frequencies that need reduction in order to tame the varying problems with lowmid tubbiness and/or feedback that ive sometimes struggled with.

This is coupled with an important epiphany ive had, which is that amplified acoustic guitar sound almost always has more bass in it than is needed in order to realistically reproduce a natural acoustic sound through an amp or PA.

So in short, this presmp dials out, to whatever degree i choose, the full (variable) set of (unneeded) bass frequencies that are almost always the genesis of the sonic problems ive had with th k&k, leaving just the "sounds like my guitar only louder" that has always attracted me to this pickup. I'm honestly not sure how much of the GREAT sound I'm enjoying is due to this particular preamp or whether mostly its just the k&k doing its usual great job and the headway's big contribution is just the highpass filter knob. Dont really care i guess.

Whatever you get, youll almost surely want to also be able to crank down the mids, which are the other known frequency issue for this pickup.

Still early in the going with this preamp, but the early indicators are very positive. Hope this is helpful.

Both Headway preamps are superb pieces of kit - I have both. The EDM1 is very east to use and that filter very effective!