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John East J-Tone Onboard Pre Amp


Chiliwailer
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29 minutes ago, alexpea said:

I got one of these second hand in the end. Really happy with it

Seems to do a great job of focusing the sound of my jazz bass. More so than any preamp pedal I’ve used.

Very true from my experience, it’d be my 1st choice

Edited by Chiliwailer
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  • 1 month later...

Have been pondering one of these for my old Jazz. Been delayed as they’re not in stock anywhere. In the meantime, was looking at the J-Retro too...

Strikes me that the J-Retro preamp is far more flexible, but the passive mode is pretty much just a backup, whereas the J-Tone is very usable in both modes. I would like the extra options, but don’t really want to compromise my ability to play in passive...

Has anyone used both circuits to compare?

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  • 2 weeks later...

Decided to give the J-Tone a go (too many bells and whistles on the J-Retro for me...). Just a question about wiring - I’m pairing up with some Aguilar 4J-HC pickups which have 3 wires each - white, grey and black, and yellow, grey and black.

Am I right in assuming white/yellow is the hot signal, grey the cold and black needs to go to ground? 

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2 hours ago, iamtheelvy said:

Decided to give the J-Tone a go (too many bells and whistles on the J-Retro for me...). Just a question about wiring - I’m pairing up with some Aguilar 4J-HC pickups which have 3 wires each - white, grey and black, and yellow, grey and black.

Am I right in assuming white/yellow is the hot signal, grey the cold and black needs to go to ground? 

I found a wiring diagram - shows two earths and one for signal. Hope that helps. 

Also, just to say I had a J-Tone with some Fralin HC pickups, unfortunately the J-Tone couldn’t handle the output and was clipping. I spoke to John East, he was baffled too. I had to sell it. Hopefully it’ll be better with the Aguilars. 

E39482DF-E363-4F8F-824F-57ECFF77B1B9.jpeg

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39 minutes ago, Chiliwailer said:

I found a wiring diagram - shows two earths and one for signal. Hope that helps. 

Also, just to say I had a J-Tone with some Fralin HC pickups, unfortunately the J-Tone couldn’t handle the output and was clipping. I spoke to John East, he was baffled too. I had to sell it. Hopefully it’ll be better with the Aguilars. 

E39482DF-E363-4F8F-824F-57ECFF77B1B9.jpeg

Yeah, that’s the diagram that came with the pickups. Fine for a usual wiring setup, but doesn’t quite match the East wiring diagram for the J-Tone...

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15 minutes ago, iamtheelvy said:

Yeah, that’s the diagram that came with the pickups. Fine for a usual wiring setup, but doesn’t quite match the East wiring diagram for the J-Tone...

But isn’t the East just one connection for earth, and one for the signal? I’d put the earths together and off you go. (For each separate pickup).

Edited by Chiliwailer
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7 hours ago, iamtheelvy said:

http://www.east-uk.com/pdf/jtone01.pdf
 

The east diagram has a Ground connection and a Cold/Ground connection.

I’ll go into more detail - the East diagram isn’t for a 3 wire HC pickup. So when I wired mine, I put the hot wire for each pickup into the designated terminal, and joined the other two wires to go into the other terminal, for each pickup.  

Then, the single ground terminal on the east (at the other end of the control plate) had the wire from the bridge and an extra one my control cavity had attached to a screw, for extra grounding (a vintage bass might have a control cavity plate, or some basses just the bridge wire).   

The key thing about that East diagram you linked is that the two terminals for the pickups, specifically state from pickups. So all pickup wires go there. 

Because the East terminals are really made for just one wire, you may want to join the two wires to a new single wire, and put that into the East terminal. At a push you can join the two and squeeze it in - though  t’s a bit tight and may create stress on the terminal. 

Good luck, if I recall correctly it’s more simple than it seems 👍

Edited by Chiliwailer
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Ok, Cool. Sounds good to me. 

2 hours ago, Chiliwailer said:

I’ll go into more detail - the East diagram isn’t for a 3 wire HC pickup. So when I wired mine, I put the hot wire for each pickup into the designated terminal, and joined the other two wires to go into the other terminal, for each pickup.  

Then, the single ground terminal on the east (at the other end of the control plate) had the wire from the bridge and an extra one my control cavity had attached to a screw, for extra grounding (a vintage bass might have a control cavity plate, or some basses just the bridge wire).   

The key thing about that East diagram you linked is that the two terminals for the pickups, specifically state from pickups. So all pickup wires go there. 

Because the East terminals are really made for just one wire, you may want to join the two wires to a new single wire, and put that into the East terminal. At a push you can join the two and squeeze it in - though  t’s a bit tight and may create stress on the terminal. 

Good luck, if I recall correctly it’s more simple than it seems 👍

http://www.east-uk.com/pdf/jtone01.pdf
 

The east diagram has a Ground connection and a Cold/Ground connection.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, update on this - Managed to get hold of one of these and install it the other day. The preamp sounds great but is a fiddly fit. Very tight in the cavity of my bass, so be aware of that. I played round with it for a few days but decided that the passive route was the way to go for this bass, so have gone back to the simple set up. 

Would definitely consider this if i was building from scratch, or if a bass had a pre-routed battery compartment.

Pretty much brand new J-tone is now up in the marketplace! 

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  • 2 years later...

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