B1 Buffer - Guitar Preamp?

[brian.goodman]

Hello,

Anyone familiar with the music of Tuck and Patti and Tuck Andress' beautiful guitar tone might know that Tuck uses a really old onboard guitar preamp to buffer his guitar pickup. I was wondering if the B1 could be used in a guitar. So a few questions:

Is the B1 suitable for a guitar buffer preamp?

How long would batteries power a B1?

Is the input capacitor required when connected a guitar pickup?

Thanks,

Brian

 

[BFNY]

Hello,

Anyone familiar with the music of Tuck and Patti and Tuck Andress' beautiful guitar tone might know that Tuck uses a really old onboard guitar preamp to buffer his guitar pickup. I was wondering if the B1 could be used in a guitar. So a few questions:

Is the B1 suitable for a guitar buffer preamp?

How long would batteries power a B1?

Is the input capacitor required when connected a guitar pickup?

Thanks,

Brian

Yes, but the caps could be a lot smaller

don't know (depends on what batteries are used)

Yes

see http://www.muzique.com/lab/buffers.htm

 

[chrismercurio]

Hello,

Anyone familiar with the music of Tuck and Patti and Tuck Andress' beautiful guitar tone might know that Tuck uses a really old onboard guitar preamp to buffer his guitar pickup. I was wondering if the B1 could be used in a guitar. So a few questions:

The best way to approximate "Tuck-like tone" is to get ahold of the Bartolini TXE pickup and stick it in a killer axe. These are no longer made but was an active pickup. I had one in a custom job that I sold about 5 years ago. Most likely the best pickup I have ever heard, especially if you are after that clean, clean, clean sound, but with unmistakable tone.

I called Bartolini about it in the last 6 months lusting after that sound again and they said they no longer build them. I haven't seen them on eBay either. You can buy a 1CTA Bartolini which is the passive he used for years, but it isn't the same by a long shot. In any event I would stay away for trying to diy something that may already be available from Seymour Duncan, Bartolini, or EMG for cheap.

http://www.tuckandpatti.com/tuck_tone.html

Just my opinion,

Chris

p.s. From http://www.bartolini.net/information/electronics/electronics_a.htm

Buffers 9 volt or 18 volt
AGB-918 Adjustable Gain Buffer - 9 volt or 18 volt - with adjustable gain trim pot prewired
.
AGDB-918 Adjustable Gain Dual Buffer - 9 volt or 18 volt - with adjustable gain trim pots prewired
.
AGPB-918 Adjustable Gain Piezo Buffer - 9 volt or 18 volt - with adjustable gain trim pot prewired
.
.
MPB1-918 Magnetic and Piezo (dual) buffer - low frequency boost on the piezo side - prewired adjustable gain trim pot on the magnetic side - 9 volt or 18 volt
.
MPB2-918 Magnetic and Piezo (dual) buffer - flat frequency response (no low freq. boost) on the piezo side - prewired adjustable gain trim pot on the magnetic side - 9 volt or 18 volt

I thought they had it. Just had to look a little.

 

[Nelson Pass]

Perhaps you would be interested in the "pure gain" booster.

http://www.fuchsaudiotechnology.com/products-plush.php

 

[chrismercurio]

I had someone build a custom cascading boost several years ago for really low output pickups. It was like 2 of those Fuchs pedals in the same box with one gain circuit feeding into the next. There are a lot of those "clean" boost pedals, but I don't really know if that is what this guy was after.

 

[Nelson Pass]

I mention it because I worked on it.

 

[chrismercurio]

Cool!

I will look around and see if I can find the one I have.

 

[brian.goodman]

My you do get around!

Nelson,

Very interesting! The Fuchs Audio Technology unit is a pedal. My plan was to put the buffer inside the guitar (like Tuck's). Is this a subtle hint that the circuitry is similar? Still hoping for advice on whether the specific B1 circuit is suitable for guitar and whether the input capacitor is needed.

By the way, for Chris' benefit the link describing the Tuck's setup and the sonic benefits is here:

http://www.tuckandpatti.com/vocalguitarsound.html

That is what I'm hoping to emulate using the B1, but with my choice of pickup.

Thanks,

Brian

P.S. I've been a DIY audio guy since the 60s, not a guitar guy who happened to land on this site. I subscribed to Audio Amateur when you wrote your first article there. My next project is an F5.

 

[chrismercurio]

Brian,

This stuff has been on the TuckandPatti site since the late 90's and I am very familiar with it (although the edits from the last 4 years were nice to catch up on). Use whatever pu you like, but the TXE was an active 1CTA with a built in buffer preamp based on the long out of production Carrotron preamp. I owned this pu and used it with a tube amp that was custom built to reproduce that sound and it did an amazing job. Funny thing about that pickup was that it sounded great no matter what you plugged it into. Mackie PA, student Crate amp, or my killer tube amp. It was always consistent. There is still the Bartolini buffer linked in my first post in this thread...and I'm sure Bill did a nice job engineering it.

You can PM me offline if you are more interested in the setup I was using.

From the page you linked:

The buffer preamp is amazing. Guitars are invariably impedance mismatched relative to whatever follows them, with a substantial but unnecessary loss of clarity before even going through any circuitry. We all grew up hearing and therefore loving that sound, but I have come to prefer the sound of the more theoretically correct approach. I have not fully tested it yet, but Bill Bartolini designed an onboard buffer preamp using my Carrotron as a reference then built it into a pickup (the TXE), and reports that he surpassed it in all respects, which I don't doubt.