Hey Tech Room humans.

As you probably know, I work for a well known musical instrument company. In that job, I works with a ton of desirable guitar gear. It's great. In my personal life, though, I've always been attracted to the oddball and the unusual gear. I'm more impressed by someone sounding original with unusual gear than someone sounding classically awesome with well known and accepted cool and classic gear.

Like many of you, I was curious about the IVP. I got one in about 2001 and used it as a bass preamp for a while. I had an always on Sansamp GT2, though. I never connected with it as a guitar device, but I appreciate it and I see how it can be used for good. This whole experience sent me on a "preamp quest" for a while, but I got burned out on gear for fun when it became my day job. I did enjoy studying every aspect of the common, popular guitar amp circuits. However, I'm now at a point where I'm looking for inspiration , discovery, and palate cleanser.

I remember the next one I looked into was the Roland SIP300? It was the one Greg Ginn used in the early 80s. It kinda looked like a home karaoke machine or something.

I dug into a lot of the 80s 1u and 2u preamps from the hair metal days. It seems like every amp company made a mid-priced rack preamp for the ambitious hair metal guitarist that felt like he needed a full 12 space rack to be taken seriously in the scene. Some of these were accidentally good.

The owner of a studio where I worked had one of those Carvin Quad X preamps. It was a surprisingly solid take on a four channel, Mesa inspired thing. I'd love to dive in a bit nowadays.

So, what have you tried? If you're comfortable sharing, tell us what you think is great, charming, or terrible.

Thanks!

Hafler T2. Any chance in hell this can be used for good and not evil?

I also love trying old/weird preamps. One of my favorites is the pre in the WEM Copicat tape echo. The tube model is fantastic. I typically skew toward a treblier, harsher sound, but the WEM is super smooth and gives some nice, soft, overdrive when dimed. Unfortunately it doesn't amplify the signal enough to get to line level. While I can't run it straight into my power amp, I use it frequently when recording direct. It also shines into something like a Twin with big, clean headroom. The pre on the solid state version actually sounds really great too.

I'm with you that folks should try to find their own sound...but goddamn it's super hard. I went down this hole a little bit, trying to find new, interesting, abrasive sounds & never really got there. Context + personal taste always determines what's defined as "good" or "works" or not and of course always subjective.

Closest I came was a solid-state Marshall 9000. Was going after a gnarly direct-in sound. It was fine, not really inspiring enough to move forward. Tried a weirdo BBE unit and yeah, underwhelming. I think for that to work you really kinda have to plug straight into a Neve or something like that, and even then for my taste, that sound works better for leads than as a rhythm bed or riffage throughout a song....maybe if you were playing more intricate, melodic, single-note stuff it might work.

I think we've talked too on the old forum how you could get a different-sounding guitar preamp out of an old tape deck that had 1/4" inputs on it. Since a lot of those are parts machines with degraded belts and rollers, that might be the best purpose for some of these things.

I have an IVP too and never really found that to be as interesting-sounding as I was hoping (and have posted along these lines quite a few times here over the years). I break it out once in a while hoping to finally unlock whatever secret is waiting there and never do.

First 'preamp' I ever had, before any pedals was running a peavey bandit with the gain cranked headphone out into a silvertone 2x12 ss combo. it ruled. Leading to...

Garnet Herzog! (essentially a champ with a resistor dummy load) - Never played an original but I built one out of an epiphone valve jr. and it was a blast!

pretty much any amp with a line out off the output transformer will do something similar - whole amp head as preamp. yeeha!

Not a guitar preamp really, but I used to have a lot of fun with one of those old silver Realistic Stereo Echo/reverb units made for HIFI setups in your uncles basement. They are made for unbalanced line level so a guitar makes them distort a lot and it a giant cool mess. Very "Medicine" sounding.

Just to be clear, I have no problem DI-ing preamps. However, I usually prefer to run them into a power amp and then into actual speaker cabinets.
Right now my home "amp" for loud rock is just my HX stomp running two amp models, then running into both sides of a Peavey power amp, then into my two 1x12 cabs.

I kind of have this dream for my next band of finding two oddball preamps to run into a big power amp and then into whatever cabs are around.

Another aspect of me looking into this is that I'm at a point at my job where I can design "original" circuits, either virtually or physically. I'm looking to be inspired by ideas that are something other than just Fender, Marshall, Vox, and so on.

I'd never heard of this until 30 seconds ago.
Yamaha PG1 Now I need to find one for $100 or less!

benadrian wrote: Mon Jun 27, 2022 5:33 pm I'd never heard of this until 30 seconds ago.
Yamaha PG1

Now I need to find one for $100 or less!

These are the types of things I see in pawn shops and the lesser music stores that have been over priced and collecting dust for 20 years. I used to see those BK Butler Tube Works preamps in shops a lot and was curious about them, but never played one.

Get your Peavey on!!

https://www.ebay.com/itm/181216276303?h ... XQfj9SM0i4

Well... now I'm fully down the rabbit hole of 80's/90's rack guitar gear thanks to you.

weird Carvin thing

https://www.ebay.com/itm/185184761877?h ... SwHRVhn86e

weird Roland thing

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115125030958?h ... Sw2oVhqknF

Weird bass version of weird Roland thing ( I think I want these stupid things as a set)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/311394908057?h ... xy1JBSR40K

Weird Hafler thing that looks interesting.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/313998864777?h ... SwXeVigk4Q

I have an empty 12U rack that is asking for a bunch of this garbage to be racked up with my Peavey 60/60 Tube amp with a little switching matrix to control it all. Maybe pick up some early ART FX or a Quadraverb and play Surf'n with the Aliens sounding shit all day.