4nkam
Well-known member
The mailman had a huge box for me...look what was inside 
Pretty dirty...would be an understatement This sucker must have all its original dust
So you might recall that I had scored two Boogie preamps within a couple days of one another. The first was this Studio for $200 and the second was the Quad for $400 :thu: I've wanted to try out both of these for awhile now, so I jumped at the chance of being able to have both.
I hooked up the Studio from its main outs to the fx return of my Tremoverb and dialed in a clean tone with my Jackson guitar. This guitar is the one I mainly use for my bluesy stuff, really clean, etc. Although it has two humbuckers in it, I have both of them split most of the time and that's how I use it.
So I fired it all up and lemme tell you, when you hear people say this can get an AWESOME Fender style clean tone, they aren't kidding The low end was tight and thick, it held together no matter how hard I hit the low E. The mids were nice and smooth, as were the highs. Chords had a real sense of feeling, you could really *Feel* it when you play. It's just a great, warm, ROUND, thick in your face tone. And this was just with my bridge humbucker! This was with the rhy bright on and the EQ engaged made it stick out a bit more too.
Now the lead channel is a little different story. With the same exact settings, same guitar, it didn't sound too good. It's got some decent sustain but it's really raw sounding, not too smooth. So I went and changed the settings. That helped a bit. Taking the EQ out also helped to smooth things out. So naturally, dialing in the clean tone means the clean sounds best and the lead is suffering a bit, so I'm gonna work on finding a good compromise...maybe.
Now I also tried the recording outs and I flat out didn't like them. The cleans sounded thin and weak, the lead was a bit smoother but more "Covered" sounding/feeling.
I also tried a few other guitars real quick. another superstrat style with duncan distortion in the bridge and dimarzio breed in the neck. The clean tones were a bit more jumpy sounding and it broke up much easier. The lead tone was better though, due to the higher output pickups. It was pretty smooth, good amount of sustain, etc.
I tried my explorer with EMGs...didn't like it at ALL. But then again, this particular guitar has a really dark, almost dull sound to it. The strings are also very dead, so maybe that's to blame. I'll try it again in a few days when I get new strings. But as it was, the clean was useless and the lead was crunchy.
Last guitar up was an Ibanez 7 string with an emg 81-7 in the bridge. Clean was so-so since I only have this one pickup in it...The leads were pretty good, fairly smooth and warm. Still gotta play with it some more.
Other stuff...the board isn't seated firmly anymore, the little tabs are broken underneath so it kinda just sits on the chassis. Because of this, the LEDs had come out of the front panel, so I pushed them back in. As you can see, it's also extremely dirty. I gotta clean it up later (suggestions?). Some of the pots were very scratchy too, particularly the MID pot. It was scratchy and making the volume cut in/out while I was messing with it. Output B's volume control is totally crapped up, gotta buy a new one.
So other than those little things and possibly a new set of tubes, this sucker was a great buy! Since I have a few other preamps, amps, and I have the Quad coming, I'm thinking I could just use this for clean tones...I really dig em a lot :thu: Of course, I gotta try and get my guitars in similar conditions so I can really test it out and see if any work better than others. That might change this a bit, haha...
MJ
Pretty dirty...would be an understatement
This sucker must have all its original dust
So you might recall that I had scored two Boogie preamps within a couple days of one another. The first was this Studio for $200 and the second was the Quad for $400 :thu: I've wanted to try out both of these for awhile now, so I jumped at the chance of being able to have both.
I hooked up the Studio from its main outs to the fx return of my Tremoverb and dialed in a clean tone with my Jackson guitar. This guitar is the one I mainly use for my bluesy stuff, really clean, etc. Although it has two humbuckers in it, I have both of them split most of the time and that's how I use it.
So I fired it all up and lemme tell you, when you hear people say this can get an AWESOME Fender style clean tone, they aren't kidding
The low end was tight and thick, it held together no matter how hard I hit the low E. The mids were nice and smooth, as were the highs. Chords had a real sense of feeling, you could really *Feel* it when you play. It's just a great, warm, ROUND, thick in your face tone. And this was just with my bridge humbucker! This was with the rhy bright on and the EQ engaged made it stick out a bit more too.Now the lead channel is a little different story. With the same exact settings, same guitar, it didn't sound too good. It's got some decent sustain but it's really raw sounding, not too smooth. So I went and changed the settings. That helped a bit. Taking the EQ out also helped to smooth things out. So naturally, dialing in the clean tone means the clean sounds best and the lead is suffering a bit, so I'm gonna work on finding a good compromise...maybe.
Now I also tried the recording outs and I flat out didn't like them. The cleans sounded thin and weak, the lead was a bit smoother but more "Covered" sounding/feeling.
I also tried a few other guitars real quick. another superstrat style with duncan distortion in the bridge and dimarzio breed in the neck. The clean tones were a bit more jumpy sounding and it broke up much easier. The lead tone was better though, due to the higher output pickups. It was pretty smooth, good amount of sustain, etc.
I tried my explorer with EMGs...didn't like it at ALL. But then again, this particular guitar has a really dark, almost dull sound to it. The strings are also very dead, so maybe that's to blame. I'll try it again in a few days when I get new strings. But as it was, the clean was useless and the lead was crunchy.
Last guitar up was an Ibanez 7 string with an emg 81-7 in the bridge. Clean was so-so since I only have this one pickup in it...The leads were pretty good, fairly smooth and warm. Still gotta play with it some more.
Other stuff...the board isn't seated firmly anymore, the little tabs are broken underneath so it kinda just sits on the chassis. Because of this, the LEDs had come out of the front panel, so I pushed them back in. As you can see, it's also extremely dirty. I gotta clean it up later (suggestions?). Some of the pots were very scratchy too, particularly the MID pot. It was scratchy and making the volume cut in/out while I was messing with it. Output B's volume control is totally crapped up, gotta buy a new one.
So other than those little things and possibly a new set of tubes, this sucker was a great buy! Since I have a few other preamps, amps, and I have the Quad coming, I'm thinking I could just use this for clean tones...I really dig em a lot :thu: Of course, I gotta try and get my guitars in similar conditions so I can really test it out and see if any work better than others. That might change this a bit, haha...
MJ
