A couple of months or so ago we presented this little unit for bass players in the news section. Today we have the chance to tinker with the preamp and put it on the test bench. We are looking at this bass preamp, powerful (I’ll say so up front), housed in a rugged aluminum case.
Unboxing
It may seem irrelevant, but just seeing the quality of the packaging, the box, its printing, the manuals (the languages they come in), etc. is a good gauge, as a first impression, of the care the manufacturer (this one or any other) takes in presenting its products. In this case we open an attractive, well-designed white box with all the necessary information. On the website you also have manuals, downloads, specifications, videos, etc. (in several languages, including Spanish). It is quite well done.
What is it and what is it for?
It is a compact-format preamp for electric bass that we can put to a variety of uses. The best part is that all of them can be squeezed for quality results. Whether our bass is passive or active (with a passive we will probably notice it even more), the Bass Pocket Amp is going to give our bass sound a really solid “extra oomph.” Thanks to the abundance of its controls, we can also “color” and modify the instrument’s sound, according to its shortcomings or the exact circumstances of the situation we are facing: live, recording, rehearsal, etc.
As an effects pedal
We will use the unit between the bass and the amp. That way we can work with clean, overdrive and fuzz sounds, and EQ them to taste.
Amp for direct recording
Want to skip the amp but not lose that energy in the sound? Well, plug the bass into the Palmer Bass Pocket and take the signal from the balanced XLR output, to feed it into the console’s mic input. You will enrich the bass signal and work under very different conditions than a plain, straight line signal.
Preamp and amp for live use
This time we are on stage, but instead of lugging a huge bass amp that wrecks our kidneys, we carry the Bass Pocket in our pocket. We plug the bass cable into the pedal and send its signal to the line/mic input of the mixer or the powered PA covering the gig. With the proper care in gain staging so as not to clip the signal, we will again be working under optimal conditions that will give the bass sound great warmth and flexibility.
Practicing through headphones
I did the tests myself by connecting the bass to the preamp and taking the signal from the pedal’s headphone output (mini jack). In this case I used a 9V battery, which fits inside the Palmer (although it can also run on a power adapter), and I avoided cables. With the bass, the headphones and the Bass Pocket you can rehearse and work in a really powerful way, because you get warm sounds with more options than your bass usually gives you “straight.”
Reamping
In this case we will add the product to our effects chain or plug it in via the “insert” of a mixer channel. That way we can process already-recorded tracks and give them the color of this preamp and its effects.
Conclusions
It is a first-rate product. A metal case, impeccable sound, and it will give you control over bass, drive (in different types of gain and saturation), ground lift, treble, input attenuator, mids, pre/post control, volume, vintage/modern cabinet simulation, etc. In short, you can take a “dull” passive bass signal to a sound with a powerful color. You can also refine the sound of your active bass if that’s the case. It isn’t especially cheap (€189 list price, although you can surely find it a bit cheaper in stores if you work at it), but it is top-shelf. Or at least that was my impression. A preamp that is well made, well finished and does well everything it was designed to do.
