Preamp for clean sound

Genzler is high on my list. RE/Q or Magellan Preamp:

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Just ordered Magellan Preamp. There is only one demo of it in the whole youtube:

But there is a lengthy thread on talkbass forum where people swear by it.

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Genzler makes great gear - let us know how it plays when you get it and test it!

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Some great features on that one!

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As stated above, it’s not, lol. All my preamps color the sound, it’s just a matter of what color you like or want.

I think the OP mis-characterized what he’s looking for, not clean per se, but a sound he has in his mind that to him says “clean”. Very different.

The Bass Rigs, the Ampeg, yadda yadda yadda exist to color your tone. If any of them were a “clean” boost, I wouldn’t own them, I have an amp for that.

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I’m surprised @howard hasn’t mentioned the Placebo pedal from Chibson.

Completely transparent!

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I said clean, not transparent. I wouldn’t say I “mis-characterized” what I want.
I also said no drive ( meaning overdrive/distortion/fuzz etc.).

My understanding of clean in short is “no overdrive or distortion”.

And I am not alone in that perception:

I found those quotes from the first couple of links returned by Google search:

Sweetwater:

A “clean” guitar tone that does not contain distortion or overdrive, though other effects, such as chorus, delay, and reverb may be part of the sound.

Fender:

Some tube guitar amps are designed to be very loud and clean (the venerable Fender Twin Reverb being a great example). Such amps are said to provide plenty of “clean headroom”—you can turn them up halfway or so, where the amp isn’t working too hard, and produce a good clean sound that’s strong enough to hang with a loud drummer.

I can understand now, that term clean may mean something else to others.

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If you want clean then you need The Blues Box (shipping and handling not included)

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How is it relevant to the topic?

Ok, so what you left out is what type of tone coloring you want in your “clean/non-distorted sound”.

Pretty much all tube emulating preamps will have some sort of tone coloring due to the tube emulators. The drive portion is just pushing those tubes harder.

Pretty much all SS preamps have this flavor of tone color as well. This is why you might want to focus on the coloration you like. Any preamp with a gain/drive/distortion circuit can also be taken out by either a footswitch or simply turning a knob to zero.

The Ampeg’s SGT footswitch is what cuts the “drive/distortion” out of the circuit btw.

Clean in guitar speak is a bit different than bass speak btw.

This is true, but I think the concept of “clean” is similar for both bass and guitar. So without any distortion or fuzz.

If we talk about tone I would rather say transparent. Bit tricky tho since a lot of people market it as clean.

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I use both really. But it’s just pedantic semantics to quibble on this. The important thing is he gets what he likes.

That Genzler is adding some serious color on some of the settings I heard; I like it. Sounds like a very effective EQ.

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Yes, how about “a transparent amp will give you a clean tone”!? Indeed, semantics, but it is still important to refer to the same thing when using a certain word. In science/engineering, “substrate” means many different things to different people.

It does, but maybe you also heard it together with Genzler’s fuzz and/or OD pedals? In any case, it does add some color, and if that was NOT what @jacq wanted, then the Re/Q would have been the better choice, I guess…

Let’s see how he likes it when he gets it!

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I also use the MXR M81 to give my Jazz bass a bit more oomph. It was a better option than putting an active circuit in the instrument itself.
I also use a Trace Elliot Transit B which also gives a great clean sound ( I never use its drive function).

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I got it today and after 1h of playing around with it, I am happy.
I like it slightly more on my Jazz bass (with roundwounds) than on Precision (with flatwounds), but I guess it is a matter of learning how to dial it correctly.
In regard to color, it is definitely not dramatic. For my ears, it is rather subtle.
I need to spend more time with it to have a better feel of the contours. Somehow they have more impact on the sound when playing Jazz bass.

And… it is clean. Loads of headroom. It only starts to break a little bit if I massively boost the signal on my Empress Compressor (which normally I never do).

Finally, decent build quality.

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Congrats.

Have fun with it!

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That’s cool. I’m glad you found what works for you. :sunglasses::+1:

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Those are the ones i’d get too and so far, i’ve been successful at not buying them :joy:

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Yeah I loved my VT Bass DI, and the NeuralDSP VMT/B7k Ultra plugin is fantastic

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