John East MMSR 3Knob 2 Band - advice!

[Sammybass]

Hi! I'm hoping someone will help me out. I have a custom made P-bass with a single Bart MM 'bucker in the sweet-spot. At the moment it's just wired in passive, but I'm not getting the tone I love in my 'Ray or Bongo. 
The bass was routed future-proof to accommodate a John East preamp, and I'm thinking about the 2-band MMSR option to keep things as simple as possible. 
Does anyone have any experience of this preamp? What can I expect from it?

Thanks!

Sam


 

[Owen]

I just wanted to post so that every time someone answers I can come back and look at the shiny goodness!

I have no experience of the East MM pre but extensive experience of other East preamps and they do everything I want them to do.

[mcnach]

It's a very nice preamp, if you like Stingray preamps.

I'd go for the 3-knob 3-band version 'though. The semiparametric mids module is very cool. You may not touch it much, but when you need it it's like having the 7th of Cavalry coming to the rescue

 

[Sammybass]

Have a look at the build diary Owen - it's pretty special 😀.

 

[bloke_zero]

This chat just made me re-install the John East I'd previously removed.

It's the 3-Band. I took it out because I didn't like what it did to the top end and clarity having been used to the straight pickup through a passive treble and bass circuit (ala G&L L-2000).

Subsequently I got a MM Cutlass (the new one not the old one) and was finding it much easier to record with - I was having to do a lot of eq-ing to get the right sound on my stingray-like.

Upshot? Sounds great! Reading your 'The Mule' build diary (awesome!) I see the MM pickup position is naturally a bit bass lite and Leo moved it a bit for the L1500 which described exactly the problem I was having.  So I scrapped the PTB circuit and parallel/series switch that I never used and put in the John East and immediately felt the relief that comes with more bass.  I've not used it in anger but so far it's working well at 18V with Nordstrand MM4.4 in parallel.