Pre amps
 

Hi - I am searching around for a good guitar pre-amp that won't break the bank either. I used the Play Acoustic which has the Body-Rez feature / presets in it - but I'd rather have a stand-alone preamp on my pedal board to give me more on the fly options and good tonal shaping before reaching anything else. Last night I watched a video on the Boss AD-2 and it seems nice; or one of the LR Baggs…. they get pretty pricey = Grace Design Felix $1,000. Being a non-professional that seems excessive..

Feedback / user comments are welcomed.

Thanks !

Think through the feature set that are most important to you and go with the one that checks all of the boxes. I am waiting for my perfect one to be made. I have started talking with the Sunnaudio guys to make one with this feature set:

Powered by 9 volt battery or phantom power
Mute switch
Boost button
Phase switch
Treble, bass and adjustable mid (the Sunnaudio gear has well chosen frequency points)
Adjustable notch filter
High pass filter
Some other features on units available are:
Send/return for effects
Built in tuner
Built in effects like reverb, chorus, compression.
Powered by AC or wall transformer.

There are so many good ones made. LR Baggs, Fishman, Radial Tonebone, Mesa Boogie Rosette, Tech 21 fly rig, T Rex Acoustic Soulmate, Grace Alix or Bix, and a few others I have owned but aren’t thinking of at the moment. They are not all the same but they will all only do the job you want if you get the one with the tools you really need and learn how to use it correctly. It will be hard for anyone to advise you on which one to get without knowing what you want.

I like Sunnaudio because of its pristine tonal character and I know they don’t skimp on parts like others do to keep their price down. It’s not cheap. As I said before, I want to ask them to build me my perfect unit with only the features I want. I could also recommend any of the preamps made by various companies I mentioned above for different reasons.

Good luck.

I just got the Zoom A1 four and I am loving it. There is so much tone shaping/eq capabilities for such a low price. And on top, there is a three band eq with three easy to reach knobs, to make last minute adjustments to match to location/environment you are playing in. Good effects, a tuner and short looper. I got mine on Amazon for $109.00. Much better than I thought it would be.

The folks at Sunnaudio really are great, but don't you have Dazzos? Why the need for all the EQ? I run my EQ flat on my Stage One DI 90% of the time with Dazzos.

I recently bought a guitar with K&Ks already in them. Sorry K&K lovers, but you need four bands of EQ to smooth out that pickup and get it to sound half good. Dazzos will be in the guitar before the week is out. Maybe even today.

At open mic this week I asked a friend what he thought. He said two words, get Dazzos.

Lots of options out there for you from the inexpensive Behringer to the expensive Felix. I used many of them and it comes down to $ and. What you really need ... I’d go to a guitar store (with your guitar) find a similar amp and try a lot of them to give you a sense of what you really need. All my instruments have K&K’s and I’ve been very happy with an Alix (it took me awhile to try a lot of other gear), LR Baggs has a nice range of options as does EDM and Redeye and then of course maybe what you need is a tonedexter (:-)) - hope this helps

Dazzos with a big speaker PA I can run it nearly flat. Through my Base S1 with the 6” woofer, I have to turn bass down. In louder situations, I would like a HPF in a full band, and a notch when I am playing solo.

I just like having the tools available.

There are two lesser models
That grace design makes if you
Dont need the 2 channels of the felix.
The alix which is 1 ch and the bix
Which is smaller and not as feature laden as the alix. I have the felix
Because I need 2 ch. But the others
I'm sure sound just as good. I also
Have a kk pure xlr which is designed
For a 1 mgohm input impedance pups.
I think that is the most bang for your
Buck..I personally steer clear of anything
With the name behringer on it...ymmv.
You do eventually get what you pay for.

I'd recommend the Behringer ADI-21. It will work fine for impedance matching any piezo-based transducer to whatever you might be feeding downstream. Other options are icing on the cake, but it allows you to figure out just what you need in a more expensive pre.

It's inexpensive and will let you experiment at a low dollar level. I carried one of these when our band was gigging a lot for the fiddle player to use. It worked well and stood up to standard abuse from using equipment in a lot of different situations.

You can always invest in a higher dollar pre once you know exactly what you need and are willing to spend.

YES ! The best pickup available makes it so much easier. I run Dazzos through any preamp I own (see below, still waiting for my Sunnaudio MS-2) and never is there need for EQ.
But Vancebo is right: If it gets very loud, a HPF and notch can help. It's good to have the tools available - just in case.

Is the Zoom A1 Four actually a "preamp"? Also is it a D.I.?