Hey.

Im still undecided on my Stick rig, in as far as getting a nice pre amp sitch under $300. Good luck with that you might say, ha.

I 've been looking at Mackie 402VLZ3, with the understanding that the pre amps are very good. Can anyone tell me what else is comparable or better, without considering the Step-About and other great options we have, that are in the higher pro range.

Second thing is the impedance requirements for a Stick rig. Do I need 1Mohms coming out of a mixer to create the right signal quality?

Cheers.

The Stickup and the PASV-4 are very sensitive to input impedance. I would say that 1 MOhm is minimal. The StepABout has 2.2 and my homemade preamps have adjustable impedance from 1 to 10. The cheapest way to have good sound is still the famous Tillman circuit. Here's a link for it:

http://www.till.com/articles/GuitarPreamp/

The page talks about preamps and input impedance. That's the circuit I used for my first homemade Stick pre. Here's a link for that:

http://dovetailcomputing.com/music/2007/12/24/diy-stick-preamp/

It has 3 MOhm input impedance and sounds great. It is really easy to build and is very cheap. After I showed mine to Japhlet B. A., he made several for people a while ago and they are known as the "little black box". If you are handy with a soldering iron, it's a nice build that sounds great. I think I had $20-$30 USD in it total.

That Mackie mixer you mentioned has this feature:

2 selectable Instrument inputs – no DI box needed

If you could find out what the input impedance is on those and it's over 1 MOhm, then that might be a great little Stick mixer. It's probably fine and I'm going to try to find one to try. It's also pretty cheap at $99 USD. If you get one, let us know how it works.

-Eric

Konrad - I've had one of these for a few months:
http://www.sfxsound.co.uk/mainpage.asp?page=sp2

Really nice little unit to consider for solo Stick setup.

Cheers,
Andy

Andy,

What is the battery life with that one?

Thanks,
Mad Monk.

It's actually designed as a mains-only preamp (Boss style adapter), but Max can supply a small 9V battery holder, or one that holds multiple batteries.

I mainly use it in my home studio, so I'm not entirely sure about the battery life, but current draw seems fairly low.

Cheers,
Andy

Thanks guys, those units look pretty tidy. I think the Mackie only had 600khoms.
Cheers

With the SP2 stereo channel 1 &2 out, can you seperate the melody and bass sides of the Stick?

Yes. I have one too, and it's now my main preamp. It's very nice to fit into any gig bag. You have a mono output that sums both sides of the Stick and a stereo output in which you can plug a stereo cable splitting into two mono jacks. I didn't know that Max could provide a battery holder though.

BTW you can use both the stereo and summed mono out at the same time, which is pretty handy.

Cheers,
Andy

Well..... I just ordered an SP2.

It's gonna be fab, what a sweet little piece of work.

Thanks for the tip guys. So my rig starts out as simple and powerful. SP2 & RCF 12"/tweeter combo. I'll buy another 12" RCF down the track to get a full stereo spread.

Ciao for now.