again looking for eq preamp for violin/mando , personal experience with this.
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again looking for eq preamp for violin/mando , personal experience with this.
Both the companies you are inquiring about have built solid reputations for quality products. Your best bet is to buy both, try them side by side and return one.
thanks , that does look like the option to do, I have not had much luck with personal experience on a couple of violin and mando sites.
it doesn't have a sweepable mid control if thats important to you.
Grace Design preamps are the best I've found. I use the Felix.
Check out the Grace Alex for single channel use.
Start looking in the Alex price range and the Tonedexter begins to look intreguing. I'm an analog kind of guy, but man, having your mandolin sound like your mandolin , that's enticing.
+1 for BrIck: I took an extensive A/B comparison with my Collings MF 5 mandolin today:
1. mandolin straight to an old Neumann KM84 mic (my studio fav)
2. Pickup (K&K) through Tone Dexter (I own one for three weeks now)
3. Pickup / attached mic (DPA 4061) mixed 50/50 through Grace Felix (HPF on both channels) - my current live set up
All signals went to an QSC Touchmix 16 Mixer (no EQ) and on to a pair of QSC K8.2 speakers.
Result: I just could not believe how close the Tone Dexter sounds to the Neumann mic.
Also a ToneDexter fan, though I have only used it with my fiddle (don’t have a mandolin pu yet). I said elsewhere that if you want your instrument to sound like it’s mic’ed but you can’t or don’t want to use a mic, get a ToneDexter. No knock at all on the Grace stuff, they are great with lots of features, but they are only as good as your pickup system - a piezo will still sound like a piezo. The TD initially takes a fair amount of experimentation to get dialed in, but even my first attempt sounded light-years better than any other setup I’ve heard. IMO in general most mandolin piezo pickups sound better than fiddle piezos (as in “more natural”), so a TD might not be as crucial. But if you’re planning on using it with your violin too, I can’t recommend it enough.
I use a Grace Design Bix at Church for guitar but I personally own a ToneDexter and use it all the time on mandolin with the group and prefer to use it on guitar at Church when I can. The Bix does well, sounds nice, no issues but the ToneDexter does let you have more of a mic'd sound and so plugging in isn't as bad as it used to be.
ToneDexter is worth the money in the long run.
thanks I have the pz pre now but will look into the tonedexter