Bass Gear Issue 7 : Page 45By Tom Lees The Nightwalker Bass Guitar Tube Preamp is intended to bring back the old school bass tones that dominated the airwaves decades ago. All user controls and jacks are conveniently located on the front panel, which includes a single input and a pair of outputs: one labeled “High Freq” and another labeled “Low Freq/Mono.” Each of the outputs is driven by a respective half of a single 12AX7 tube. There is a volume control associated with the high frequency output and a volume control associated with the low frequency output. A switch roughly centered between the volume controls and output jacks is identified as a bi-amp switch. There is also an overdrive switch and a footswitch input jack. All in all, this is a set-and-forget style of preamp. You will not waste a bunch of time trying to dial in your sound. Plug in, turn up and groove. Construction The Nitewalker preamp is in a “brick” style enclosure. The unit is not rack mountable, but the housing is dimensioned so as to be easily placed on top of an existing rig. Taking a look at Fig. A , all user controls are panel mounted to the front panel and are hand-wired to the circuit boards. A power cord and a fuse extend from the back panel. The result is a clean minimalist layout. A pair of circuit boards stand mounted back to back, in a vertical orientation thus dividing the inside of the enclosure into two sections. The right-side section (looking from the front panel) houses the preamp circuitry and a transformer for the power supply. The left-side section (looking from the front panel) includes a large choke for the power supply and the power supply circuitry on a daughter card that is coupled to the preamp circuit board by brass standoffs. Taking a look at Fig. B , the preamp circuitry is soldered to a single circuit board that spans the entire height and depth of the enclosure. The circuit design takes advantage of a blend of vintage style capacitors and modern capacitors. The single tube plugs into a nice quality socket that is soldered directly to the preamp circuit board. I pulled the tube from the Fig. A Fig. B Fig. C %&& !$%# b; Publication List Using a screen reader? Click Here |
