Ashly SC-40 instrument preamp

  • Thread starter Thread starter antichef
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antichef

antichef

pornk rock
I saw this Ashly SC-40 for sale used for not too much, and I remembered that a bass player I was in a band with used one of these (maybe a different model) and I loved his sound, so I picked it up.

Anyone use these? This unit works fine -- it's got a parametric EQ, which is more than I can handle in most cases. Anyone use them for anything other than bass? I'm think about trying it with a hi impedance mic for harp.

And, thanks to this *(#@ place, I'm already thinking about modding it. I opened it, and saw it has the RC 4558 N opamps. There's lots of discussion here about switching those out with pin compatible replacements in other units, but has anyone tried it with one of these Ashlys?
 
OK - I went to the local electronics stores, and the only interesting candidates I could find for replacements were LF353s. I then went to Mouser's website and ordered some OPA2134PA - they arrived the next day, even though I picked the cheapest shipping (wow! guess we're both in Texas).

I never have much time to do this (like at most one hour every Saturday), so I couldn't do a lot of testing, but I did play a short line on a bass (I'm *not* a bass player). I used flat EQ and the same gain settings. Here are 24 bit wav files of each - they're big, as 24 bit wav files must be - the average about 10 megs each:

http://recursor.net/ashly/RC4558N.wav (the stock ones)
http://recursor.net/ashly/LF353.wav
http://recursor.net/ashly/OPA2134PA.wav (these have the Burr Brown logo, but are billed as Texas Instruments "Sound Plus" -- TI bought BB).

I like the OPA2134's the best - as a bonus, there seems to be a lot more headroom - I can turn up the input much further without clipping. None of them seem to be very noisy, but perhaps these are the quietest. I suspect there are other sources of noise in the unit, too.
 
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