@ 60 is totally reasonable. My local shop will let you put anything on consignment for about 30% of the sale. So slightly better. They gotta make profit, and guitars hold their value better than video games? Ever tried to take last years madden game to gamestop?
You and Taylor Danley are the only guitar channels I still watch. Keep up the great work man, I appreciate how thorough your videos are. Edit: After watching the video, I didn't like the affect at first. When you dialed in a tone that worked with the preamp I liked it a lot more, but I'm still not sure I'm convinced to move to actives yet
Thanks! That is high praise man! Taylor is so dialed in with his flow, but it still feels like a real conversation and he seems to be having fun while doing stuff. Maybe I will get to his level one day. He is a really cool dude though and gives good advice, and I think is a US west coaster like me.
the Pegasus is a bit too hot for how the preamp is intended to work, so that's probably why. 11 kOhm is probably the hottest you should run, and the Pegasus 6 string version is already pushing 12.5, and the 7 string version sits at 14.9 kOhm, well outside expected use case.
I have two guitars with this preamp in it - an Epiphone Les Paul Special that I installed a set of GFS pickups in (Dream 180 bridge and Dream 90 neck) and an Ibanez RGT42 with the stock INF1 & INF2 pickups. They both sound pretty awesome, through a Precision Drive clone and an Orange Super Crush, if I'm completely honest. They likewise sound great through that same pedal boosting a distortion into the clean channel of that same amp, and with both of my Joyo Bantamp lunchbox heads (Meteor II and Jackman II). In my experience, these work best with pickups that have a resistance of ~10 kOhm or less. The INF bridge pickup on my Ibanez is somewhere between 10 and 11, and the GFS Dream 180 has a manufacturing target of 9 kOhm. The Ibanez works great with distortion, with great attack on palm mutes, but it can be a bit much for clean, while the GFS set of pickups in the Epiphone is more well balanced and versatile.
@@needsLITHIUM it is good to hear what others have tried with this. Knowing that 10k or less works well makes sense. I might have to dig out some older spares that I have kept around from other projects and see how this does. I probably won’t keep this configuration in this guitar.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio yeah 10 or less is ideal. My Ibanez is just over 10 and it sounds great, but it's pushing it. It's in that over compressed, over boosted territory you can get into with certain EMG's, or the original Blackouts, if the gain is too high. Palm mutes have this "KLUNG" sound on the pick attack, and the fundamental gets an almost fuzzed phaser-like sound to the backwash on the sustain if I leave the gain where I had it on my B.C. Rich, which has an Invader in the bridge. The gain on the amp and the volume on a distortion or OD/boost pedal has to be taken back quite a bit to compensate. Even with my Les Paul, switching to the Ibanez I have to turn the gain down by at least 1 or 2.
I like the EMG afterburner boost. There's two, the original and the AB220. Both are variable gain boost up to 20db and the AB220 is different from the original in that it has midway detent in the pot so you can know where halfway is
I owned the Blackout Preamp when they first came out. I paired it with a Hotrails in the neck & various pickups in the bridge. I found the higher the output of the pickup least i liked it. The Distortion was to much but i quite liked it with a JB, kinda worked good with its midrange. I ended up selling it to a mate & installed it for him with Full Shreds which sounded good. I feel this would been popular if you could have switched between the normal pickup sound & the preamp.
Sounds just like a booster - Which it is. It sounds a bit compressed though on the cleans and as expected it adds gain to the distortion tone but it also adds mud. In my experience it's often a lot easier and cheaper to get the desired result with an eq pedal than swapping pickups, as long as their character is somewhere in the ballpark. Lets you cut the muddy lows while boosting the frequencies you like and add more gain.
intelligence right here. One of the only people I have seen on here actually acknowledge this. Most guys have a collection of boost pedals, I have an EQ collection. you just set the EQ the way you want it and then use the level as a boost. Way better than most boost pedals. i'm waiting for someone to get the idea of taking something like the boss Eq200 and the Revv G8 and smash them together. a 4 cable method EQ and a 4 cable method gate in a single enclosure would be amazing. then you just throw 2 sets of inputs and outputs on it, 1 set for things you want going in the front of your amplifier and another set for things you want in your loop. that way everything is gated and EQ'd where it needs to be and I think that would simplify a lot of things for many people.
I am finding myself liking ODs with active EQs more and more. I like having the clipping circuit upfront still, but the ability to shape the mids is becoming more favorable to me. For me pickups end up being about feel and response more than actual tone. A good balance of the upper mid peak frequency with the slope of the low end roll off is what I am usually looking for and the starting point for ensuring that the pick attack and palm mutes are defined up front. Not enough peak and too gradual of a low end roll off makes for a dark and tubby sound that often feel squishy. I also tend to favor medium output pickups as they don't break up as quick and work better with any gain stage in the chain. I have been using a JHS haunting mids pedal that has a parametric mid control in the loop of my EVH Stealth with great results for recoding the amp in live setting.
@9th_note where it is similar to a boost it actually is different from that. From what I remember this was designed to add an active flavour to your already existing passive pickups. Kinda best of both worlds thing, it just didn't take off
@@RedHeadGuitar EMGs are better imo. People love to dismiss them these days, but they have something almost no other pickup has, which is a smooth frequency response curve with virtually no resonant peak. It's not a flat response, but it's as close to one as you get with pickups. It's basically as if you're starting with a smooth low end and a high end rolloff EQ, with no spikes. This means you get more flexibility with your EQ, and you're starting with a pretty strong signal with a low noise floor.
@@Patrick-857 That's true - Passive pickups are extremely simple (Sorry boutique builders, it's no ****ing rocket science) and always come with the drawbacks you describe, they have very high impedance and a prominent resonant peak which even depends on the wiring and the cable. Going active eliminates most of that. They can be tweaked in a specific way and they retain that sound no matter how long your cable is etc. Pretty neat! The one and ony thing that actually made me convert almost all my active guitars and basses to passive was that I am lazy and sick and tired of buying, checking and changing batteries. About that boost in this video though: It seems (gotta admit I didn't find a data sheet or frequency response curve on EMGs website (boo) and I was too lazy to dig deeper) like a full-range boost, which is still converting your output to low impedance (good) but it's often not optimal for high gain guitar tone. You want to roll off the bass, especially when adding lots of gain, and maybe boost some mids or treble (the exact frequency depends on the amp and effects, use ears). With the booster shown in this video I'd add an EQ of some sort (The old TS is also just a crude EQ with low drive) before the amp anyways to clear the mud and add more mids, I wonder why this is not implemented in this boost already. The guitarist buying this will not be a jazz player... But the hard truth is: If you have a high gain(!!) setup which sounds good (Good cables(!!!), decent distortion/amp, with (included or as a pre-eq) some low-cut, a decent cab or IR, which provides the saturation and tone you like, the difference between different humbucker pickups is surprisingly small and can often be eliminated by just slightly adjusting the gain and the eq. An electric guitar itself, passive or active, before going into an amp, does not cover a very wide frequency spectrum compared to a microphone. If it would, it would sound terrible with the gear we use and love. If you play clean sounds or vintage gear, things are much different. Then the treble roll-off with passive pickups is very noticeable, especially with very long cables and the difference between different pickups is too. But we heavy rock and metal players...shouldn't worry too much and shouldn't waste too much money here. We should hone our skills and make good music instead.
I had the blackouts preamp installed in a Yamaha SG1300 with Spinex humbuckers. I felt it lost a bit of high end, but in general the guitar sounded more aggressive.
this is actually the intended use case, so like a '59 bridge and a li'l '59 or cool rails neck, phat cat, p-rails, alnico II pro, saturday night special, jazz, seth lover model, whole lotta humbucker, etc, if you stay in Duncan branded hardware.
Honestly yeah, a passive preamp with an active boost/preamp seems like an interesting middle ground between active and passive tone! I've had this on a Sterling JP guitar and that's also how almost every active bass works like. Would be interesting to see this compared to something like an EMG Afterburner/PA2 :)
I actually have both the PA-2 & Afterburner which I use with passive pickups. The Afterburner is the most tweakable but they are just a gain boost & add extra noise, the Blackout Preamp doesn't add much if any noise at all.
the SD changes the entire way the pickup works, by summing the coils instead of running them in a normal series. Something like a PA2 is just a clean volume boost.
I recently started using it. I prefer it to everything else, including the other two 5150 style Ampknobs, and the Gojira plugin. What I've been doing lately is running it on one side and the Rev C on the other side. Sounds huge. You can do this standalone by just turning off left output on one and right output on the other, and then setting levels accordingly. A great thing about the Ampknobs is they remember your settings next time you fire them up.
The thing that has stopped me from trying this , is that I've heard the 'standard' way of wiring your pickups to this preamp,what Seymour Duncan schematic shows...has all coils going to their own terminal . Supposedly this makes every pickup sound pretty much like blackouts . *BUT*! With that, I also read if you wire your pickups like you would to a regular pot with no coil split ( green+bare to ground , red and white soldered together and taped off, black hot ) it is supposed to keep more of its natural identity , but more output and noise free. So I've heard . I'd love to try this on my Steven carpenter ltd that has nazgul/sentient ,but only if it's normal tone is somewhat intact . Hell these aren't that expensive ,might as well shootout the difference myself .
That is interesting to hear. I might try that as well. I found this to be a bit much for the output, but if there is a way to temper the effect of the preamp, it is worth trying out.
But I did always find the Pegasus to be a flat pickup when I had it swapped em for some bareknuckle silos on that guitar was crushing but some that for new build and went impulse set lol
The Pegasus pickup seems very flat, to the point that it seems a little dark. but it has clarity and good note separation, just not enough punch for me in most cases.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio I’ve thought of it as a boost pedal thing in a weird sense. I don’t mind the sound of the pickups perse but I don’t like the lack of output from them. I’m used to active pickups but I like the dynamics from this pickups enough to were I won’t switch them out.
We’ll like to contact you, Brian - could you do a comparison of this against our Titanum12 Phantom Power? There are a few reviews out and few to come out in December.
@@AlwayzTired probably not. The overall feel of the guitar is more responsive with the preamp just from being a bit hotter. But the tone does seem to just be a boosted signal. I think this idea would be cooler if there was a way to attenuate the output. There is another mod where you can make this switchable using a 250k pot.
@@BaritoneGoatStudioit definitely different. If you okay hot pickups through a boost you’ll immediately notice medium output. It’s never the same as more boost. Ever.
it should be doable. I know switching between the two is possible. Being able to blend the two would be a major improvement over just having one or the other.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio i've been gathering parts for doing a balance mod on my 90's cortocaster, fitting the xlr and 1/4" jacks on the jack plate is the hardest part of it, but the only way i can figure to do it with active is integrating a DI box.
@@randomguitarnote8887 Unfortunately, it is active all the time. There is a mod that uses a 250k pot to switch between the the preamp and the pickups. But it is an extra process. Fishmans are technically active all the time too, they just have different voiced EQs meant to emulate a passive tone.
@ thanks for the answer, so it possible then 🤘. I know about the fishmans being actives, just couldn’t think of a better example, I don’t really like them tbh, I much prefer Emgs when it comes to actives.
That's what I'm contemplating doing to the 58/15LTe set in my PRS SE McCarty .594 singlecut standard. I'm gonna change the coil tap feature, to the boost instead. The pickups are great wide open. But anything at all below dimed, turns into useless drivel. I definitely wouldn't wanna give up the PAF crystalline cleans those pickups are known for. But the coil tap tones are basically useless. I'm thinking the muddy super compressed signal you have going there, is the exact opposite result I'm trying for. Those are already too high output to boost, in my opinion. That curcuit is designed for low output vintage voiced pickups. Sorry bud. But it sounds like shit to me. I have those pickups in my TE1000 Black Blast. I almost returned the guitar when I first got it. Because the Elxir coated strings and factory set up it came with. Were not complementing them pickups at all. My suggestion to you, is to do the exact opposite of what you've done. Instead of adding resistance to the curcuit, and then having to buffer the signal to maintain volume. Try wiring the pickups right to the switch, so in one position your going straight to the output jack. This will give you all the frequencies available directly from the pickup, before any regulation of the signal whatsoever. Then, you can always boost that signal out of the guitar with pedals. That's my 2 cents. Peace!
@@BaritoneGoatStudioSo it's doing the EMG thing, where the two coils of the humbucker are fed through separate buffer stages before being combined in the preamp? Yeah that's definitely going to produce different results to a boost pedal with passives.
@@ChristopherMichaels-t9q they sell the AHB-10 with two passive looking pickups with the preamp, supposedly voiced to be like the blackouts but look like passive pickups.
This Mod is sick! thanks for putting this together, very cool! if you like modding, craziest mod I ever seen was converting a 6 string to a Tres Cubano, it completely changes how you play guitar, Gran out of Miami uses it and sounds amazing! I'll grab a link cause I never spell his last name right ruclips.net/video/H-ojmOh12eQ/видео.htmlsi=fEeleUGRol9B18rI CC is English! Enjoy! Keep up the great videos!
Thanks. I will check that out. I can see how you could cut some new nut slots and get a Tres Cubano out of a normal six string since you need all six tuners.
Every clip sounds better without. I ran the gain boost with my 81 years ago and it was the same. The only exception was when I played thru a 2204 modded of course but still 3 stage at the time. When I say exception I don't mean better it just didn't shit the bed. In all cases. No amount of clip reduction or eq sounded better than without the boost
@@dalepiwek it did seem to just be over the top, even when trying to temper the gain on the amp. More I talk to people who have tried it, the consensus is that it works best with a lower resistance pickup. Overall, I might have to try this with a much different pickup set to see if it has any benefit. I might seek a subpar stock pickup or something under-wound in the bridge position and see what I get. Still, there is likely a reason these didn’t catch on!
@@BaritoneGoatStudio dude some shits actually backwards in this game. Try something around >7.5-8k -10k with a 1 meg volume pot. In some cases shit lights right up I've experienced this with a couple Gibson's and a mid 80s Schaller.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio I realize it's not a typical agreement it's actually contrary right? But this applies across the board. I've achieved the Grail in 2203s and 4s and 1 backwards(backwards to them I guess😂) lead dress fuck up was a part of it. If Bach was alive he'd be experimenting right?
@@dalepiwek yeah. I have yet to dive into the 1M pot on my humbuckers yet. I have some A2 pups that are fairly dark but have a bite I can hear trying to come through. I am all for just trying it out until something pops through that hits. I will have to keep digging around and trying things!
@@dougleydorite I kinda feel like it might be. It seems to go a bIt beyond just an active voicing. It also makes my amp settings a bit different than I am used to, even when I run active pickups. There is definitely a boosting effect, and if this were something that were able to be switched on and off, it might be more useable. SD does have a mod to wire a 2way switch using a 250k pot to make the preamp switchable, but that is another step. Ultimately, this can be a filthy tone for certain styles, but it may depend a lot on the type of pickup itself for how good it works.
@@Chugg.Norris I think it needs a really vintage spec’ed pickup to do what it wants, or I need a milder gain channel like a Marshall. Even on the medium output side the Pegasus is too much.
yeah, it seems to be a gain boost mostly. Definitely has a soft clipping limiter of some sort as part of its design. I can see that transients get cut off at a certain amplitude in the waveform when the input is clipping.
I got lucky and have two within 30 mins of me, and both have decent used gear. But, the good stuff goes quick. If you catch something that has been on the shelf for a while, they are willing to haggle more. Only one of the stores actually sets up their guitars though. The other one it is like “good luck” actually playing something.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
I own that guitar and now I can see how this mod will take it to the next level without changing the pickups
Guitar Center really is the greatest “guitar pawn shop”.
@@tyrannosaurusriffs for buyers… not so much sellers. Ha ha.
@@BaritoneGoatStudiofor sure! I asked on 1 item and was like never mind. I’ll be patient. Horrible for sellers.
@@tyrannosaurusriffsyou expect them to give you full value then turn around and sell it for the same price? I’m confused what you actually wanted
@@Ottophil never said I expected full value. 60% seems a bit crazy but that’s the option they offer and I understand.
@ 60 is totally reasonable.
My local shop will let you put anything on consignment for about 30% of the sale. So slightly better.
They gotta make profit, and guitars hold their value better than video games? Ever tried to take last years madden game to gamestop?
You and Taylor Danley are the only guitar channels I still watch. Keep up the great work man, I appreciate how thorough your videos are.
Edit: After watching the video, I didn't like the affect at first. When you dialed in a tone that worked with the preamp I liked it a lot more, but I'm still not sure I'm convinced to move to actives yet
Thanks! That is high praise man! Taylor is so dialed in with his flow, but it still feels like a real conversation and he seems to be having fun while doing stuff. Maybe I will get to his level one day. He is a really cool dude though and gives good advice, and I think is a US west coaster like me.
@BaritoneGoatStudio Yup! He's based outta Oregon, I'm outta Seattle, us West Coast metalheads gotta stick together
the Pegasus is a bit too hot for how the preamp is intended to work, so that's probably why. 11 kOhm is probably the hottest you should run, and the Pegasus 6 string version is already pushing 12.5, and the 7 string version sits at 14.9 kOhm, well outside expected use case.
That guitar is sick! I love its a 7 string with a 27 inch scale and a set of some awesome duncans.
I have two guitars with this preamp in it - an Epiphone Les Paul Special that I installed a set of GFS pickups in (Dream 180 bridge and Dream 90 neck) and an Ibanez RGT42 with the stock INF1 & INF2 pickups. They both sound pretty awesome, through a Precision Drive clone and an Orange Super Crush, if I'm completely honest. They likewise sound great through that same pedal boosting a distortion into the clean channel of that same amp, and with both of my Joyo Bantamp lunchbox heads (Meteor II and Jackman II). In my experience, these work best with pickups that have a resistance of ~10 kOhm or less. The INF bridge pickup on my Ibanez is somewhere between 10 and 11, and the GFS Dream 180 has a manufacturing target of 9 kOhm. The Ibanez works great with distortion, with great attack on palm mutes, but it can be a bit much for clean, while the GFS set of pickups in the Epiphone is more well balanced and versatile.
@@needsLITHIUM it is good to hear what others have tried with this. Knowing that 10k or less works well makes sense. I might have to dig out some older spares that I have kept around from other projects and see how this does. I probably won’t keep this configuration in this guitar.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio yeah 10 or less is ideal. My Ibanez is just over 10 and it sounds great, but it's pushing it. It's in that over compressed, over boosted territory you can get into with certain EMG's, or the original Blackouts, if the gain is too high. Palm mutes have this "KLUNG" sound on the pick attack, and the fundamental gets an almost fuzzed phaser-like sound to the backwash on the sustain if I leave the gain where I had it on my B.C. Rich, which has an Invader in the bridge. The gain on the amp and the volume on a distortion or OD/boost pedal has to be taken back quite a bit to compensate. Even with my Les Paul, switching to the Ibanez I have to turn the gain down by at least 1 or 2.
I like the EMG afterburner boost. There's two, the original and the AB220. Both are variable gain boost up to 20db and the AB220 is different from the original in that it has midway detent in the pot so you can know where halfway is
I owned the Blackout Preamp when they first came out. I paired it with a Hotrails in the neck & various pickups in the bridge. I found the higher the output of the pickup least i liked it. The Distortion was to much but i quite liked it with a JB, kinda worked good with its midrange. I ended up selling it to a mate & installed it for him with Full Shreds which sounded good. I feel this would been popular if you could have switched between the normal pickup sound & the preamp.
Sounds just like a booster - Which it is. It sounds a bit compressed though on the cleans and as expected it adds gain to the distortion tone but it also adds mud. In my experience it's often a lot easier and cheaper to get the desired result with an eq pedal than swapping pickups, as long as their character is somewhere in the ballpark. Lets you cut the muddy lows while boosting the frequencies you like and add more gain.
intelligence right here. One of the only people I have seen on here actually acknowledge this. Most guys have a collection of boost pedals, I have an EQ collection. you just set the EQ the way you want it and then use the level as a boost. Way better than most boost pedals. i'm waiting for someone to get the idea of taking something like the boss Eq200 and the Revv G8 and smash them together. a 4 cable method EQ and a 4 cable method gate in a single enclosure would be amazing. then you just throw 2 sets of inputs and outputs on it, 1 set for things you want going in the front of your amplifier and another set for things you want in your loop. that way everything is gated and EQ'd where it needs to be and I think that would simplify a lot of things for many people.
I am finding myself liking ODs with active EQs more and more. I like having the clipping circuit upfront still, but the ability to shape the mids is becoming more favorable to me. For me pickups end up being about feel and response more than actual tone. A good balance of the upper mid peak frequency with the slope of the low end roll off is what I am usually looking for and the starting point for ensuring that the pick attack and palm mutes are defined up front. Not enough peak and too gradual of a low end roll off makes for a dark and tubby sound that often feel squishy. I also tend to favor medium output pickups as they don't break up as quick and work better with any gain stage in the chain. I have been using a JHS haunting mids pedal that has a parametric mid control in the loop of my EVH Stealth with great results for recoding the amp in live setting.
@9th_note where it is similar to a boost it actually is different from that. From what I remember this was designed to add an active flavour to your already existing passive pickups. Kinda best of both worlds thing, it just didn't take off
@@RedHeadGuitar EMGs are better imo. People love to dismiss them these days, but they have something almost no other pickup has, which is a smooth frequency response curve with virtually no resonant peak. It's not a flat response, but it's as close to one as you get with pickups. It's basically as if you're starting with a smooth low end and a high end rolloff EQ, with no spikes. This means you get more flexibility with your EQ, and you're starting with a pretty strong signal with a low noise floor.
@@Patrick-857 That's true - Passive pickups are extremely simple (Sorry boutique builders, it's no ****ing rocket science) and always come with the drawbacks you describe, they have very high impedance and a prominent resonant peak which even depends on the wiring and the cable. Going active eliminates most of that. They can be tweaked in a specific way and they retain that sound no matter how long your cable is etc. Pretty neat! The one and ony thing that actually made me convert almost all my active guitars and basses to passive was that I am lazy and sick and tired of buying, checking and changing batteries.
About that boost in this video though: It seems (gotta admit I didn't find a data sheet or frequency response curve on EMGs website (boo) and I was too lazy to dig deeper) like a full-range boost, which is still converting your output to low impedance (good) but it's often not optimal for high gain guitar tone. You want to roll off the bass, especially when adding lots of gain, and maybe boost some mids or treble (the exact frequency depends on the amp and effects, use ears). With the booster shown in this video I'd add an EQ of some sort (The old TS is also just a crude EQ with low drive) before the amp anyways to clear the mud and add more mids, I wonder why this is not implemented in this boost already. The guitarist buying this will not be a jazz player...
But the hard truth is: If you have a high gain(!!) setup which sounds good (Good cables(!!!), decent distortion/amp, with (included or as a pre-eq) some low-cut, a decent cab or IR, which provides the saturation and tone you like, the difference between different humbucker pickups is surprisingly small and can often be eliminated by just slightly adjusting the gain and the eq. An electric guitar itself, passive or active, before going into an amp, does not cover a very wide frequency spectrum compared to a microphone. If it would, it would sound terrible with the gear we use and love. If you play clean sounds or vintage gear, things are much different. Then the treble roll-off with passive pickups is very noticeable, especially with very long cables and the difference between different pickups is too. But we heavy rock and metal players...shouldn't worry too much and shouldn't waste too much money here. We should hone our skills and make good music instead.
It would be interesting to see how it affects a bunch of different pickups, especially some lower output ones
@@playthefightriffjohn843 yeah. Some underwound no name pickups would be interesting. Or even some older PAF styles.
I had the blackouts preamp installed in a Yamaha SG1300 with Spinex humbuckers. I felt it lost a bit of high end, but in general the guitar sounded more aggressive.
This would sound fucking sick in a Gretsch!…MY Gretsch. LOL
@@BaritoneGoatStudio I have one installed with some GFS pickups, including a humbucker sized P90 in the neck.
this is actually the intended use case, so like a '59 bridge and a li'l '59 or cool rails neck, phat cat, p-rails, alnico II pro, saturday night special, jazz, seth lover model, whole lotta humbucker, etc, if you stay in Duncan branded hardware.
Honestly yeah, a passive preamp with an active boost/preamp seems like an interesting middle ground between active and passive tone! I've had this on a Sterling JP guitar and that's also how almost every active bass works like.
Would be interesting to see this compared to something like an EMG Afterburner/PA2 :)
I am actively… 😎 looking into getting a hold of an afterburner!
I actually have both the PA-2 & Afterburner which I use with passive pickups. The Afterburner is the most tweakable but they are just a gain boost & add extra noise, the Blackout Preamp doesn't add much if any noise at all.
the SD changes the entire way the pickup works, by summing the coils instead of running them in a normal series. Something like a PA2 is just a clean volume boost.
shoutout to the Bogren Digital 66o6, I love that thing
I recently started using it. I prefer it to everything else, including the other two 5150 style Ampknobs, and the Gojira plugin. What I've been doing lately is running it on one side and the Rev C on the other side. Sounds huge. You can do this standalone by just turning off left output on one and right output on the other, and then setting levels accordingly. A great thing about the Ampknobs is they remember your settings next time you fire them up.
The thing that has stopped me from trying this , is that I've heard the 'standard' way of wiring your pickups to this preamp,what Seymour Duncan schematic shows...has all coils going to their own terminal .
Supposedly this makes every pickup sound pretty much like blackouts . *BUT*! With that, I also read if you wire your pickups like you would to a regular pot with no coil split ( green+bare to ground , red and white soldered together and taped off, black hot ) it is supposed to keep more of its natural identity , but more output and noise free.
So I've heard . I'd love to try this on my Steven carpenter ltd that has nazgul/sentient ,but only if it's normal tone is somewhat intact .
Hell these aren't that expensive ,might as well shootout the difference myself .
That is interesting to hear. I might try that as well. I found this to be a bit much for the output, but if there is a way to temper the effect of the preamp, it is worth trying out.
But I did always find the Pegasus to be a flat pickup when I had it swapped em for some bareknuckle silos on that guitar was crushing but some that for new build and went impulse set lol
The Pegasus pickup seems very flat, to the point that it seems a little dark. but it has clarity and good note separation, just not enough punch for me in most cases.
… I need it lol it sounds more agro on the high gain sound
@@jonsierra723 it definitely punches up the output! The more I work with dialing in my amp the more I don’t really need a boost pedal!
@@BaritoneGoatStudio I’ve thought of it as a boost pedal thing in a weird sense. I don’t mind the sound of the pickups perse but I don’t like the lack of output from them. I’m used to active pickups but I like the dynamics from this pickups enough to were I won’t switch them out.
Sounds great. Are you in B standard here?
@@dnthrx actually, I am running drop C# on strings 1-6 and the low string is a G# on the 7th.
We’ll like to contact you, Brian - could you do a comparison of this against our Titanum12 Phantom Power? There are a few reviews out and few to come out in December.
Certainly, feel free to contact me through my Instagram (check my Linktree), or directly through email: b.jamesii@yahoo.com
Awesome. I will say that I enjoyed the stock high-gain sounds a lot. Did the preamp do something for you that a boost couldn’t?
@@AlwayzTired probably not. The overall feel of the guitar is more responsive with the preamp just from being a bit hotter. But the tone does seem to just be a boosted signal. I think this idea would be cooler if there was a way to attenuate the output. There is another mod where you can make this switchable using a 250k pot.
@@BaritoneGoatStudioit definitely different. If you okay hot pickups through a boost you’ll immediately notice medium output. It’s never the same as more boost. Ever.
An interesting device, but I'm going to go buy more EMGs.
seen anyone do a balancing mod yet? i know a bunch have done it, but it's rather niche. it should be possible to do balanced and active together.
it should be doable. I know switching between the two is possible. Being able to blend the two would be a major improvement over just having one or the other.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio i've been gathering parts for doing a balance mod on my 90's cortocaster, fitting the xlr and 1/4" jacks on the jack plate is the hardest part of it, but the only way i can figure to do it with active is integrating a DI box.
Can you switch from passive to active with a toggle switch like the Fishmans or is it active all the time once you install it?
@@randomguitarnote8887 Unfortunately, it is active all the time. There is a mod that uses a 250k pot to switch between the the preamp and the pickups. But it is an extra process. Fishmans are technically active all the time too, they just have different voiced EQs meant to emulate a passive tone.
@ thanks for the answer, so it possible then 🤘. I know about the fishmans being actives, just couldn’t think of a better example, I don’t really like them tbh, I much prefer Emgs when it comes to actives.
@ yeah SD has a wiring diagram on their site for hooking up a switch/push-pull using a 250k pot with the preamp.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio thanks dude 🤙.
That's what I'm contemplating doing to the 58/15LTe set in my PRS SE McCarty .594 singlecut standard. I'm gonna change the coil tap feature, to the boost instead. The pickups are great wide open. But anything at all below dimed, turns into useless drivel. I definitely wouldn't wanna give up the PAF crystalline cleans those pickups are known for. But the coil tap tones are basically useless.
I'm thinking the muddy super compressed signal you have going there, is the exact opposite result I'm trying for. Those are already too high output to boost, in my opinion. That curcuit is designed for low output vintage voiced pickups. Sorry bud. But it sounds like shit to me.
I have those pickups in my TE1000 Black Blast. I almost returned the guitar when I first got it. Because the Elxir coated strings and factory set up it came with. Were not complementing them pickups at all.
My suggestion to you, is to do the exact opposite of what you've done. Instead of adding resistance to the curcuit, and then having to buffer the signal to maintain volume. Try wiring the pickups right to the switch, so in one position your going straight to the output jack. This will give you all the frequencies available directly from the pickup, before any regulation of the signal whatsoever. Then, you can always boost that signal out of the guitar with pedals. That's my 2 cents. Peace!
Would this work on other 7 string passive pickups? Seems like a good alternative instead of actually getting actives
@@metalheadblues yeah. It can hooked up to any pickup with 4 lead wires.
there's probably a wiring scheme for use with single coils or alternative preamps for use with singles.
@@BaritoneGoatStudioSo it's doing the EMG thing, where the two coils of the humbucker are fed through separate buffer stages before being combined in the preamp?
Yeah that's definitely going to produce different results to a boost pedal with passives.
Which pickups are wound like the ahb-1 ?? Very interesting
@@ChristopherMichaels-t9q they sell the AHB-10 with two passive looking pickups with the preamp, supposedly voiced to be like the blackouts but look like passive pickups.
This Mod is sick! thanks for putting this together, very cool! if you like modding, craziest mod I ever seen was converting a 6 string to a Tres Cubano, it completely changes how you play guitar, Gran out of Miami uses it and sounds amazing! I'll grab a link cause I never spell his last name right ruclips.net/video/H-ojmOh12eQ/видео.htmlsi=fEeleUGRol9B18rI CC is English! Enjoy! Keep up the great videos!
Thanks. I will check that out. I can see how you could cut some new nut slots and get a Tres Cubano out of a normal six string since you need all six tuners.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio yeah, you just need the 12 string bridge pieces and rail pickups and boom!
Every clip sounds better without. I ran the gain boost with my 81 years ago and it was the same. The only exception was when I played thru a 2204 modded of course but still 3 stage at the time. When I say exception I don't mean better it just didn't shit the bed. In all cases. No amount of clip reduction or eq sounded better than without the boost
@@dalepiwek it did seem to just be over the top, even when trying to temper the gain on the amp. More I talk to people who have tried it, the consensus is that it works best with a lower resistance pickup. Overall, I might have to try this with a much different pickup set to see if it has any benefit. I might seek a subpar stock pickup or something under-wound in the bridge position and see what I get. Still, there is likely a reason these didn’t catch on!
@@BaritoneGoatStudio dude some shits actually backwards in this game. Try something around >7.5-8k -10k with a 1 meg volume pot. In some cases shit lights right up I've experienced this with a couple Gibson's and a mid 80s Schaller.
@@BaritoneGoatStudio I realize it's not a typical agreement it's actually contrary right? But this applies across the board. I've achieved the Grail in 2203s and 4s and 1 backwards(backwards to them I guess😂) lead dress fuck up was a part of it. If Bach was alive he'd be experimenting right?
@@dalepiwek yeah. I have yet to dive into the 1M pot on my humbuckers yet. I have some A2 pups that are fairly dark but have a bite I can hear trying to come through. I am all for just trying it out until something pops through that hits. I will have to keep digging around and trying things!
Isn’t this the same as having a pedal?
@@dougleydorite I kinda feel like it might be. It seems to go a bIt beyond just an active voicing. It also makes my amp settings a bit different than I am used to, even when I run active pickups. There is definitely a boosting effect, and if this were something that were able to be switched on and off, it might be more useable. SD does have a mod to wire a 2way switch using a 250k pot to make the preamp switchable, but that is another step. Ultimately, this can be a filthy tone for certain styles, but it may depend a lot on the type of pickup itself for how good it works.
Adds way too much noise and artifacts on gain. Which it already has... sounds like your high strings are banging around laying over the actual tones.
@@Chugg.Norris I think it needs a really vintage spec’ed pickup to do what it wants, or I need a milder gain channel like a Marshall. Even on the medium output side the Pegasus is too much.
Just adds some compression and gain really
Especially actually on the clean just made it sound like had a light OD put on over super cleans the high gain actually had more of a difference
yeah, it seems to be a gain boost mostly. Definitely has a soft clipping limiter of some sort as part of its design. I can see that transients get cut off at a certain amplitude in the waveform when the input is clipping.
My local guitar center is a joke and the used section is usually overpriced junk
I got lucky and have two within 30 mins of me, and both have decent used gear. But, the good stuff goes quick. If you catch something that has been on the shelf for a while, they are willing to haggle more. Only one of the stores actually sets up their guitars though. The other one it is like “good luck” actually playing something.