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So I kinda want to jump on this Ada mp1 that's on my local cl for some heavy tunes. I was just gonna use it with my aor 100...will this work properly through the front end? I know Corgan used to use the same preamp with his Marshall's but I don't know how he wired it all up.

Put it in the effects loop, I'd jump on one if its cheap, will definatly do heavy, I know Steph Carpenter from deftones got alot of his tone for "Around the Fur" using that preamp into a marshall 9200

Badass. I may have messed up somewhere/used a bum cable but when I tried putting my cathedral in the loop I got a HUGE volume drop and the knobs did absolutely nothing...

May also want to make sure your effects loop is properly functioning, if there is any knock that I can think of with the AOR series is that the loop was prone to malfunctioning.

Yeah it needs a once over from a tech anyway. Thanks for the help doods.

and also, to answer your original question, you can run it into the front of the head, but I always have better results with preamps in the loop.

I waited too long and now it's gone! Prowling the bay now. What are some good similarly priced alternatives?

Really depends on the dough you have, that ada mp1 is gonna be the best tube preamp in sub $300 range that I can think of, marshall has a jmp-1 that will cost some extra coin, and mesa has a triaxis and rectifer preamps that cost damn near as much as a head. I ended up buying the mp1 over the marshall preamp years ago and paired it with a rocktron intellifex , I kinda miss that rig

The skyhammer and Meatsmoke preamps are fucking amazing. they are spendy though. I think worth it if you have a need for that sort of thing though. one of the best bass sounds I have heard was a Meatsmoke pre going into one of those cheap old Kustom tuck and roll heads. You would not have thought it was capable of sounding that good but it was huge!

Boogie Studio pre is basically a Mark IIC in a rack. Sometimes they'll surface sub $300. The Quad, which adds another rhythm/lead side more like a Mark III, will sometimes go for not much more.

Finding a mesa studio preamp sub $300 would be an absolute steal, typically the nirvana fanatics drive the price up on those when they show up on the bay

Question: How do a tube pre-amp rack and a tube overdrive pedal differ in terms of their intended application/s
?

Ro_S wrote:Question: How do a tube pre-amp rack and a tube overdrive pedal differ in terms of their intended application/s
?

Tube overdrives are overdrive pedals with a fancy pilot light meant to add more dirt to your amp. Tube pre-amps are meant to be actual amplification units that you can use as part of a full amplification system or as a direct recording tool.

The thing OP is describing is normal for a pedal in a line-level effects loop, impedance doesn't match.

There could be something wrong but it's classic 'wrong thing in wrong place.'

For any preamp like that I'd try it in the loop and in front, I generally like that type of thing run into the front of the amp versus loop but I don't use amp channels for dirt in the vast, vast majority of cases and have them dialed fairly neutral to that amp.

With a preamp in front, I let it do the work and the amp's EQ be the final tweaker as needed.

The ADA sounds decent through most stuff. I'm partial to non-tube options as I only care about what it sounds like, not what it's built with, and I love my venerable Boss GL-100 for dual-channel guitar/bass preamp duties. Cheap, effective, and gain channel is a HM-2 on steroids if needed with parametric EQs.