Tone Monster SBK-3A Bass Preamp FULL REVIEW + DEMO (only $45)
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Okay guys, I’ve listened to your comments and what you guys want to see are the best value mods to improve your tone for little money. So here I’ve got a great way to improve your bass tone on a budget. The Tone Monster sbk-3a bass preamp. I’m dan, this is guns and guitars, Let’s hear how it sounds in this full review and demo.
I bought this tone monster Sbk-3a preamp on eBay. Let’s take a closer look at this thing. Tone monster definitely has the do it yourselfer in mind when they created this thing, because it comes completely prewired. In fact, you don’t even need to solder your pickup connections, it has a no solder terminal block, where you just screw in your pickup wires, neck hot on the left, bridge hot on the right, and all grounds go in the middle. Done! Super simple installation, anyone can do it. This version, the “3a” version, has 5 knobs for your pickup blend, master volume, bass, treble, and the mids are a stacked pot with the bottom controlling the boost or cut, and the top is a parametric frequency selection. So let’s talk frequencies a little bit. All the controls feature a boost or cut of 12db at their respective frequencies:
The bass knob controls +\-12db at 100hz
The treble knob controls +\-12db at 4khz
And the mid you can select any frequency between 800hz and 2khz. That is really cool. You wont see that feature on any other preamp at this price point. And that feature is the whole reason I wanted to try this preamp. Also, if you don’t have 5 holes in your bass and you don’t want to drill a new one, they offer this same preamp in a 4 knob version, the “3AD” where the bass and treble controls share a stacked pot as well. This thing is capable of running at both 9v and 18v if you want to add a second battery in series for more headroom. And Lastly, this preamp is for passive pickups only. It will work with piezo pickups as well, but not active pickups.
Before I demo his thing for you I want to tell you about a quick hack...
Talk about hack for auditioning bass preamps
Talk about building a preamp pedal instead
Okay let’s see how this thing sounds. For this demo I didn’t actually install it in my bass, I just hooked up the terminal block to the hot and ground of this instrument cable so that I can test to see if it’s a good fit for my bass before I commit to installing it. Speaking of the bass, this is that Ammoon jazz bass kit I reviewed a couple weeks ago. But You’ll notice I made a few changes, obviously I cut up the body (don’t judge it’s far from done) and installed new pickups.
Now because there are a lot of options on this preamp, I’m gonna keep the demo pretty simple so you can hear each change in tone. Unfortunately that also means that it’s gonna get very repetitive.
Okay first let’s start by comparing the bass without the preamp, vs the bass with the preamp and eq set to flat.
Demo
Okay first off you already noticed, this preamp boosts the signal gain quite a bit all around, and even though I had the EQ set to flat (all knobs on their center detent) it colors the tone a little. My ears noticed a little boost in the low mids, probably around 200hz or so.
Now let’s play with the EQ a little. I’m going to start buy cutting the highs, then boosting them. then I’m gonna both cut and boost 3 different mid frequencies, the first being with the frequency knob at the highest setting which should be 2khz, then at the center detent somewhere around 1khz, and then the lowest setting which should be 800hz. Lastly, I’m gonna cut and boost the lows. Check it out.
Demo
Now to give some idea of how these setting blend together, here are a few settings that I came up with that complement the 3 different playing styles, plucking, slapping, and picking.
Again, I’m gonna demo the bass without the preamp first so we can compare it to the bass with using the preamp and EQ settings...
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