Particle Accelerator

[gordo]

I always support my peeps and that goes double for local guys so when Sushi Box released their Alembic F-2B tube project it was a no brainer.  The Alembic pre is beyond legendary and there are a ton of iterations of it but the double whammy of getting a really nicely engineered board with an already machined enclosure tripped the Paypal trigger.

This is how the project shows up and I'm getting parts together now.  Nice touch with "Sushi Box" packing tape.  My current live rig is a Tech21 Sansamp pre that is set up to handle four different bass players.  They make it intentionally hard to get to so that nobody screws with the basic setup.  It loves my Jazz and is a no brainer for the other guys that plug in.  Still, I'd like to warm it up a bit and offer it up to the other guys when I run sound.

Hang in with me as I get to build up this little beast....

[jessenator]

Nice! Looking forward to seeing this one come together. Interestingly, the only bass-related thing I've built is that superfuzz... I'm a bassist first, so I'm intrigued by this box.

[Thewintersoldier]

I don't remember what this pedal does exactly so I gotta look it up. Are you going to do a waterslide or engraving on the enclosure? looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[gordo]

Finally finished this one with a few orders coming in for parts.  I thought I had this covered but...

Anyway, the origin of this pedal (and don't flame me if I get this wrong) started when Alembic was doing a lot of amp work and a common mod was to put a line out on Fender amps to drive power amps.  The Grateful Dead, specifically, used Dual Showman and Twins to drive Crown power amps thru Martin speaker enclosures.  The Dead were notorious at the time for having an absolutely crazy good sound system and their stage gear was no less quality.  The Showman had tons of head room and was great for squeaky clean to slightly driven tones and the challenge was to make that loud and pass it to as many cabinets as was needed.

The F-2B was a pair of Showman pre's in a rack mount that allowed for stereo operation either in or out or both.  It was quite popular (and still is) mostly with bass players who are looking for a simple preamp to drive outboard amps and cabs.

This version is a single channel that does the high voltage with electronics wizardry rather than big transformers.  It easily mimics the original's sound of low gain to mid gain while retaining all the fatness at any volume level.  Quite wide ranging tone controls, especially considering the limitations of the controls on a Fender.  The scary part is that it's easily capable of driving the front end of a power amp so the output level is blistering.  I think I'm hitting unity at about 10 o'clock on the gain (for a just-this-side-of-clean gain) and about 9 o'clock on the output.  Noise level is dead quite.  No I mean like DEAD quiet, and zero switching noise at least at sane amp input levels.

I like this little guy.

[gordo]

The venting holes don't really look this clean, as the decal got a bit lumpy but I'll give a nod to a good camera angle for a flattering photo



The JJ tube does the job nicely and you could play with NOS but the heart of a Showman is simple and clean so no real magic needed here.

[jimilee]

Nice. I may grab one of those. My focus is shifting back to playing now that I will have my degree in a couple of weeks and I can have all that time back.


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[gordo]

Jimi this would make for a great pedal platform. Tough part is deciding how you'd use this.  IR output to the fronts, run it to a power amp and speakers.  The sky is the limit.  But for an analog solution this is a beast.  Hit me up if you need parts.

[jimilee]

Jimi this would make for a great pedal platform. Tough part is deciding how you'd use this.  IR output to the fronts, run it to a power amp and speakers.  The sky is the limit.  But for an analog solution this is a beast.  Hit me up if you need parts.

Hey thank you sir. So it's a preamp. I have a cmos (maybe) power amp that's been sitting here for a while now. I could run it into the effects in on my amps too, I'm guessing. I've never actually heard an alembic preamp before.


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