Premier Guitar and various pickup manufacturers are giving away over 40 sets of pickups in the month of June on PremierGuitar.com with Pickup Party 2011! Check out the interactive calendar below to see participating manufacturers and their respective giveaway dates. Make sure you bookmark this page and check back regularly to keep tabs on the Pickup Party and to see who the winners are.
Winners will be notified by email the morning following that respective giveaway. The winners list can be found below the calendar and will be updated each day following a giveaway.
This contest is open to residents in the U.S. and Canada. Full rules can be found here .
Good Luck!
*Click below on the current giveaway day to enter for your chance to win (Calendar updates between 9:00 am and 10:00 am daily).
Pickup Party Winners:
June 1: (Kent Armstrong Pickups - 1 winner) Josh Ross of Mt. Sterling, KY
June 2: (Tesla - 2 winners) Opus-1: Neville Kroeger of Kingwood, TX AH-2: Steve Reese of LeRoy, NY
June 3: (Cream T Pickups - 3 winners) Ricc Terranova of Des Moines, IA; Chris Hunt of Safford, AZ; and Doug Child of Snowmass, CO
June 6: (Mighty Mite - 3 winners) Kyle Taylor of Kenosha, WI; Chad Nulph of Columbia, MO; Paul Shuffield of Arkadelphia, AR
June 7: (Shadow Electronics - 3 winners) EQ 5: Jensen Thrasher of Rainsville, AL; AZ 48: Brian Jones of Camas, WA; 145 G: Christine Greenwald of Denver, CO
June 8: (Lollar - 1 winner) Martin LaFever of Wilmington, NC
June 9: (DiMarzio - 3 winners) Eugene Sabaitis of St. Paul, MN; Damon McCarty of Hominy, OK; Glenn Leming of Kalispell, MT
June 10: (Nordstrand - 3 winners) Allen Wright of Benton, AR; Daniel Lopezof Franklin, TN; Steven Sternberg of Margate, FL
June 13: (David Allen Pickups - 3 winners) Kevin Wermers of Merced, CA; George Jameson of Cody, WY; Alan Cosgrove of Akron, OH
June 14: (Seymour Duncan - 3 winners) Steven Brenner of Winnetka, CA; David Merril of East Corinth, VT; Joshua Jenkins of Athens, GA
June 15: (Guitar Fetish - 3 winners) Bob Chekoudjian of St. Louis, MO; Andrew Collins of Nashville, TN; John Baum of Abington, PA
June 16: (Hanson Pickups - 2 winners) Ferris Fleming of North Attleboro, MA; Matthew Landry of Seattle, WA
June 17: (Fishman - 3 winners) Michael Norton of Sneads Ferry, NC; Jeff Taylor of San Francisco, CA; William MacDonald of Fargo, ND
June 20: (Budz - 1 winner) Steve Kasmiersky of Pasadena, TX
June 21: (Zex Coil - 3 winners) Paul Yarber of Moorhead, MN; Robert Read of Mount Prospect, IL; Stephen Kinal of Derby, KS
June 22: (EMG - 1 winner) Ruben Gordon of Lakeville, PA
June 23: (Joe Barden - 1 winner) Alex Kanburov of Houston, TX
June 24: (LR Baggs - 3 winners) Alice Iu of Quincy, MA; David Baker of Oak Harbor, OH; Eric Freberg of Lockport, NY
June 27: (MojoTone - 3 winners) Matthew Mittelstadt of Derchester, MA; Curtis Lund of Walla Walla Washington; Joseph Woodard of Adams, TN
June 28: (Lindy Fralin - 1 winner) Patrick Kirk of Kansas City, MO
June 29: (Fender - 1 winner) Ron Siwicki of Winnepeg, Manitoba
June 30: (Carvin - 2 winners) Robert Koch of Willmar, MN; Michael Brown of Smyrna, TN
July 1: (Rio Grande - 1 winner) John McCool of Salt Lake City, UT
If 3 Were 6
With six times the controls found on the 1 and 2 versions (if you discount the original’s on/off slider switch,) the LPB-3’s control complement offers pre-gain, boost, mid freq, bass, treble, and mid knobs, with a center detent on the latter three so you can find the midpoint easily. A mini-toggle labeled “max” selects between 20 dB and 33 dB of maximum gain, and another labeled “Q” flips the resonance of the mid EQ between high and low. Obviously, this represents a significant expansion of the LPB’s capabilities.
More than just a booster with a passive tone, the LPB-3 boasts a genuine active EQ stage plus parametric midrange section, comprising the two knobs with shaded legends, mid freq and mid level. The gain stages have also been reimagined to include a pre-gain stage before the EQ, which enables up to 20 dB of input gain. The boost stage that follows the EQ is essentially a level control with gain to allow for up to 33 dB of gain through the LPB-3 when the “max” mini toggle is set to 33dB
A slider switch accessible inside the pedal selects between buffered or true bypass for the hard-latch footswitch. An AC adapter is included, which supplies 200mA of DC at 9.6 volts to the center-negative power input, and EHX specifies that nothing supplying less than 120mA or more than 12 volts should be used. There’s no space for an internal battery.
Power-Boosted
The LPB-3 reveals boatloads of range that betters many linear boosts on the market. There’s lots of tone-shaping power here. Uncolored boost is available when you want it, and the preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.
“The preamp gain knob colors and fattens your signal as you crank it up—even before you tap into the massive flexibility in the EQ stage.”
I found the two mid controls work best when used judiciously, and my guitars and amps preferred subtle changes pretty close to the midpoint on each. However, there are still tremendous variations in your mid boost (or scoop, for that matter) within just 15 or 20 percent range in either direction from the center detent. Pushing the boost and pre-gain too far, particularly with the 33 dB setting engaged, can lead to some harsh sounds, but they are easy to avoid and might even be desirable for some users that like to work at more creative extremes.
The Verdict
The new LPB-3 has much, much more range than its predecessors, providing flexible preamp, boost, and overdrive sounds that can be reshaped in significant ways via the powerful EQ. It gives precise tone-tuning flexibility to sticklers that like to match a guitar and amp to a song in a very precise way, but also opens up more radical paths for experimentalists. That it does all this at a $129 price is beyond reasonable.
Electro-Harmonix Lpb-3 Linear Power Booster & Eq Effect Pedal Silver And Blue
