Quick review - Valeton Acoustic Dapper Mini Preamp

[Nick84]

I picked up an absolute bargain in the January sale over here in the UK from GuitarGuitar. I bought a Valeton Dapper Mini Acoustic Preamp pedal. These normally retail around £80-£100 in the UK so cheap at standard price. I got this for £29! I had seen a couple of online reviews on YouTube and bought it solely on the ridiculous price.

I’ve already got a pedalboard and figured this would be a nice option to take to smaller gigs and use with my Black Angel passive pickup.

This reminds me of the Tech21 Flyrig Acoustic pedal I used to own only smaller! It’s build quality appears the same apart from the small knobs which in my opinion feel more sturdy than the Flyrig.

The pedal has 4 parts to it

Tuner - this feature I was most pleased with this aspect. It’s very accurate and quick. It’s faster and more accurate than the tuner on a Baggs Venue I used to own and use regularly.

Compressor - I like it. Sounds very similar to the FlyRig’s compressor. It has a volume, compression and attack knobs. I found I liked it on permanently - less is more.

Preamp - no sweepable mids and no lo cut which would have been nice. Has a notch filter and notch frequency knob. When you activate the preamp you get a noticeably warmer sound.

Reverb - just one controlled by one single knob and activated by footswitch (I’d have preferred that footswitch to be a boost instead). Nice reverb similar to the ambience effect on the Boss AD-2 for those familiar with that pedal.

I used it in a loud bar on Saturday night and utilised the notch filter on that ocassion. The preamp itself was very low noise and I had no issues with it.

On Sunday evening I played in a quieter restaurant and was able to mess around with the preamp a little more.

I really can’t believe how much I have paid for this preamp. It feels like a sturdy, quality piece of gear. For a simple grab and go solution it’s perfect. Yes it could do with a boost function and sweepable mids but for something that’s 20cm long it does an awful lot!
https://youtu.be/Hj6KQEsJOHw

http://www.valeton.net/html/en/index...t=read&did=245

[westernslope]

Very cool. I've been considering one of these for exactly the reasons you mentioned. At the end if the day I'm a minimalist and if I could do it all with an onboard preamp I would. How much eq functionality does it offer?

[RedJoker]

Interesting! I looked for manual but couldn't find one. Do you happen to know the input impedance for use with a passive pick up?

[Nick84]

Originally Posted by westernslope

Very cool. I've been considering one of these for exactly the reasons you mentioned. At the end if the day I'm a minimalist and if I could do it all with an onboard preamp I would. How much eq functionality does it offer?

It only has treble mid and bass EQ with notch. It’s pretty basic but does the job.

[Nick84]

Originally Posted by RedJoker

Interesting! I looked for manual but couldn't find one. Do you happen to know the input impedance for use with a passive pick up?

I looked around for this also but couldn’t find it. I’ll send valeton a message and see what they say.