JTEX Distiller Filter Preamp

[Mediocre Polymath]

I just thought I'd write a quick first-impressions review here, as I can't see any other threads in the BC archives on this system.

 

The basics first. The Distiller is an active resonant-filter tone circuit, like what you'd find on an Alembic or a Wal. It consists of a low-pass filter whose resonant frequency is swept up and down using the potentiometer. Everything above the frequency gets cut, everything below stays unchanged. You can also switch in two levels of boost at the resonant frequency. 

 

Before I go on to the review bit, I should say that I didn't buy a filter preamp because I want to sound like Justin Chancellor. This is an unusual situation in the filter-preamp market, which I've done my best to illustrate with the venn diagram below. 

 

I mention this because a lot of the existing discussions on these sorts of devices seem to judge them mostly on the metric of "how cool does it sound when I play the riff from Schism?". I, on the other hand, have no strong opinions about Tool, and just wanted something that gave me a wide range of tones without covering my bass in knobs. 

 

By that measure, I think this does a great job. The best part for me is the regular low-pass filter (with no resonant frequency boost), which is a very effective but surprisingly unobtrusive thing. 

 

With a gentle turn of the Distiller, you can roll off just that annoying clicky highest of high end without muddying the musical treble you want to keep. Go beyond that, and you have effectively a very precise and controllable version of a passive tone control. It goes from "normal but with the edge taken off" to "reggae through the wall from a house party down the street". 

 

The two boost modes are, in my opinion, very usable at the top and bottom end of the range, but perhaps not so much in the middle. At the top end with both the low and high boost modes, you get some great aggressive sounds while maintaining the option of cutting out the clicky noises. There are some good sounds there – particularly in the lower mids, and particularly with the low-boost mode – but a lot of them feel a bit too nasal and odd sounding to be useful. 

 

As you get towards the low end, the low-boost mode gives you some great dub-like sounds while the high-boost makes your bass sound a lot like a synth bass. I can see myself playing around with those a lot.

So yeah. Two thumbs up from me. 

 

Oh. Also, here are some very quickly recorded and very rough samples of the three modes. Each one starts with the frequency sweep all the way up, and then goes down through the range step by step. I apologise for both the quality of the recording (just straight into Audacity) and my playing (best described as repetitive, tuneless noodling). 

 

No boost. (I checked this against old recordings, and I can confirm that the starting point sounds indistinguishable from the bass when it was wired passive). 

 

Low Boost

 

High Boost (might be clipping the interface a bit here and there). 

 

 

Edited 16 hours ago by Mediocre Polymath

[Mediocre Polymath]

Just realised I forgot to mention, the distiller is fitted to my Hohner "The Jack" (double humbucker model, not the ones with jazz pickups). All the recordings were made with both pickups on full.