J-TONE "John East" preamps

[kiat]

Hi, about a year and a half ago I bought and installed a new (version: Volume/Blend/Tone) J-TONE into my Lakland JO5.  Although it's been stable and I can mostly get the sounds I want, I'm pretty certain I'm not getting the best out of it yet, nor is the battery life great.  If you have or have had one, what are your impressions?  How much tweaking did you do? Do you use Passive often and when do you?  Are there some pedals or other things in your chain that doesn't like Active being on? 

 

Things I'm considering

• getting into rechargeable batteries and installing a permanent charger extension cable neatly into the bottom of the bass through to the cavity
• fully trying out the various adjustments that can be set, interoperating my amps and IEMs
  • frequency wheels
  • plug-in tone cap
  • bass control (boost/cut or boost only)

[itu]

If I remember right, the honorable John East uses very modern opamps that consume very little energy (try an old Alembic that needs a power plant beside it). I don't believe in rechargeable batteries in my basses. They are much older (1986-1999) than your preamp. I usually change batteries once a year. Strings twice a year. 

 

The issues with battery consumption sound like there's some wire in a wrong place, or some part is touching conductive paint. 

 

OD/dist/fuzz family of effects behave and sound different depending on the output Z (impedance). Connect the pedals straight to the bass and look after sound changes while changing from hi-Z to lo-Z from the tone switch. 

 

Bass I would set to boost only. There has never been any need to cut it, and then the pot adjustments would be more accurate because of a longer track. 

 

(I prefer vol and blend to VV. This is highly subjective.) 

 

Freq wheels need the band around you. Then you can get a good idea of the adjustments in real context. The same applies to changing caps. 

[tauzero]

1 hour ago, itu said:

The issues with battery consumption sound like there's some wire in a wrong place, or some part is touching conductive paint. 

 

Indeed, and my suggestion elsewhere of a multimeter between the battery and the clip wouldn't show up battery drain if it only happens when the preamp is in situ. I think you could detect that with a multimeter and a stereo jack plug by checking the resistance between ring and sleeve, which should be open circuit (have been trying to work out if you could have a situation where the preamp powers up with ground and battery negative not connected to each other, and I don't think you can but ICBW).