Unplugged, the Timbre produced a clean, dry tone across the rosewood fretboard. It’s one of the louder acoustic bass guitars I’ve had my hands on in recent memory, and the sound projected well across my not-huge living room, but I was also on my own. As with other instruments in this category, you’ll be plugging in if you’re playing with others and want to be heard.
The Fishman Presys+ preamp is capable of wide-ranging tone shaping through its 3-band EQ and brilliance dial. Rich, earthy tones came forth with the Timbre plugged in, and I especially liked what I heard with the mids dialed down and the bass, treble, and brilliance set around 1 o’clock. The clean, woody sound had plenty of thump for walking bass lines along the Timbre’s comfy neck. If you’re after acoustic low-end tones without the heft and hassle of an upright and you like the idea of an acoustic bass guitar with an aesthetic different than most others, a Timbre tryout could be time well spent.
Test gear: Gallien-Krueger 800RB, Orange OBC212, Focusrite Scarlett 2i4
Recorded direct with Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 interface into GarageBand.Clip 1 - Preamp settings: bass 2 o’clock, middle 11 o’clock, treble 2 o’clock, brilliance noon, phase off, notch at noon.
Ratings
Pros:
Good build. Top-notch electronics. Nice tones. Visually striking.
Cons:
A touch pricey compared to others in its class.
Street:
$699
Spector Timbre
spectorbass.com
Tones:
Ease of Use:
Build/Design:
Value:
Revv G3 Purple Channel Preamp/Overdrive/Distortion Pedal - Anniversary Edition
The Revv G3 revolutionized high gain pedals in 2018 with its tube-like response & tight, clear high gain tones. Suddenly the same boutique tones used by metal artists & producers worldwide were available to anyone in a compact pedal. Now the G3 returns with a new V2 circuit revision that raises the bar again.
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
