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10 Bass Preamps To Drive Home Your Tone

10 Bass Preamps To Drive Home Your Tone

Take it to the stage or studio with these bass preamps/DIs.

There's a preamp for every flavor of bass, from clean tones to upright to overdriven grit. This list covers a wealth of options for all budgets.


​​​MXR BASS DI+​​


Fine-tune your sound on this 2-channel DI with a 3-band EQ, color switch, and noise gate.

$189 street

jimdunlop.com

WALRUS Badwater

This box features a 4-band EQ, optical compressor, and a blendable, 3-voice drive control.

$299 street

walrusaudio.com

AGUILAR Tone Hammer Preamp/Direct Box

Based on the company’s Tone Hammer amp, this box features bass and treble knobs, sweepable midrange controls, and switchable tube-like saturation.

$299 street

aguilaramp.com

RADIAL Bassbone V2

This 2-channel preamp includes two inputs plus a PZB booster and piezo input, so feel free to bring your upright on the gig for a few songs.

$399 street

Radialeng.com

TECH 21 DI-2112

Geddy Lee’s signature box is a feature-rich dual-channel affair with separate level controls, plus drive, saturation, and blend knobs.

$359 street

Tech21nyc.com

DARKGLASS Alpha Omega

Maximize your grit with this box, which is based on two blendable distortion circuits and features a 3-band EQ plus bite and growl toggles.

$349 street

Darkglass.com

AMPEG SGT-DI

Conjure classic Ampeg SVT and B15 tones with this stomp’s voice control and cab sim. A 3-band EQ plus switchable high and low boosts, plus overdrive and compression, round out the features.

$399 street

Ampeg.com

ELECTRO-HARMONIX Battalion

This affordable offering features a 4-band EQ, compression, noise gate, and three signal-flow modes.

$174 street

ehx.com

MARKBASS Mark Vintage Pre

Loaded with a glowing 12AX7, this box features a 4-band EQ, three EQ presets, aux in, and headphones out.

$399 street

markbass.it

FENDER Downtown Express

This unit features overdrive, compression, and a 3-band EQ, each with their own footswitch, plus switchable effect order.

$249 street

fender.com

Stompboxtober is rolling on! Enter below for your chance to WIN today's featured pedal from Peterson Tuners! Come back each day during the month of October for more chances to win!

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The Sonic Youth founding member is best known for his uniquely experimental approach to the guitar. On his latest solo release, Flow Critical Lucidity, he only proves to further that reputation, mixing in spoken word, his favorite alternate tuning, and prepared instruments.

On the cover of Thurston Moore’s new solo effort, Flow Critical Lucidity, sits a lone metal soldier’s helmet, spiked with an array of tuning forks jutting out in all different directions. The image, a piece from the artist Jamie Nares titled “Samurai Walkman,” seemed to Moore an apt musical descriptor of the record.

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