I didn't have any issues with the preamp, seemed pretty transparent. I found the BH2s themselves to be very lacking in high end clarity and deep lows, "woolly", as I think someone put it, describes them well. They're just not very exciting pickups. The upgrade I did to real Barts was night and day, and Nordstrand models naturally have a ton more high end, but in fairness they're a different type of Pickup altogether (single coil models in the ibbys, aren't they?)