Overwater Original Series 'Filter Based Preamps'

[W1_Pro]

Hello folks,

I have a question with regard to this.

I've heard a few people mention Overwaters 'filter based preamps' over the years but I have to confess I have no idea what they are or what they do.

Were they fitted to Original series basses? I have three of them which are all passive. Two of those have completely standard pot and loom wiring  and the third has a pcb which might as well be pot and loom, as it has (mounted on the PCB) two pots (volume and tone), a coil tap switch and a capacitor. 

If anyone could shed any light and maybe a pic or two, I should be grateful.

[BigRedX]

I used to own two Overwater Originals. The older of the two had the filter pre-amp replaced with something more modern, conventional and IMO boring. The other still had the filter preamp fitted. 

 

The filter pre-amp is active and like most 80s electronics eats it's way through batteries, leaving the bass plugged in over-night by mistake would almost always drain the battery and under normal usage I would be replacing it every 2-3 months. Controls 4 single pots for volume, pickup balance and a then a single filter for each pickup. As far as I could tell the filter added a peak which could be swept using the control. I would set the bridge pickup to a slight top-end boost and the neck to a more bassier sound and then use the balance control to change the overall sound of the bass. Most of the time it was set to favour the neck pickup slightly. The filter preamp also included a DI output on an XLR next to the standard jack socket. 

Edited 13 hours ago by BigRedX

[bloke_zero]

Alembic and Wal are the names that comes to mind with filter preamps.

 

I got one from Luisitand - this one: https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/NFP-Preamp.pdf - I like it but I haven't used it much in anger. Good long battery life with it though as it uses modern components.

 

I don't know the Overwater versions - interesting!

[W1_Pro]

So Red, the Overwater that you had that was active..I assume that was a later one with the Kent Armstrong soap bars?

[BigRedX]

26 minutes ago, W1_Pro said:

So Red, the Overwater that you had that was active..I assume that was a later one with the Kent Armstrong soap bars?

 

They were both active, it's just that the earlier one had the filter pre-amp replaced by a more conventional one. The DI output was still in place it but the XLR wasn't connected to anything inside the bass. No idea who made to pickups. They were "soap bars" (for what that's worth, as there could be anything under the cover) under wooden covers. According to Chris May the basses dated from 1983 and 1985 so that makes them reasonably "early" in the grand scheme of things. IIRC the 1983 one was the first 5-string bass that Overwater had ever made.

 

I sold the 1985 model to someone here who might be able to add further info if they still have it.

[W1_Pro]

Thanks for that. As far as I'm aware, the  early originals had Bill Lawrence blades in them, and then for whatever reason, they (Overwater) moved to using Kent Armstong soap bars and continued doing so into the Artisan bass(on the right of the pic below).  The Kent soap bar is a relatively straightforward humbucker to  which Overwater (sometimes) added a coil tap to to facillitate single coil usage, one assumes...Mine are all passive and have a single jack out.

[BigRedX]

Both of mine had pickups that looked like those in the basses on the right of your photo.

 

Control layout was the same as that on the far right. I think it was volume, neck filter, bridge filter in line with the pickup balance control underneath.