INSTRUCTIONS
Welcome friends. The Preamp MKII. Built in collaboration with Christopher Benson from Benson Amps,
and known around here as the first Automatone.
In addition to the sounds and controls of the original Benson Preamp, we have added various clipping diode
modes, a low impedance silicon fuzz you can swap from open to gated, a parametric midrange control with
three selectable Q controls you can place before, or after the preamp, and three banks of ten presets to
recall all your favorite settings, which are designed to dovetail with most MIDI and expression control.
Let’s get into the faders, the functions and the FUN…
FADERS
The flying faders control Volume, Treble, Mids,
Frequency, Bass, and Gain. When presets are
changed, the sound is changed instantaneously.
The faders will jump to the saved presets position
shortly after to give a visual reference of what
the saved sound’s settings are. The faders are
also servo’d to follow and track position change
updates over expression, CV, and midi.
GAIN, VOLUME, TREBLE, BASS
The original Benson Preamp built in to the
Automatone features the preamp of a Chimera
tube amp, substituting FET transistors for the
12AX7s triode stages. Like the Chimera, the
controls are Gain, Treble, and Bass, and there
is an added master Volume as well. The original
offers a wide range of functions like clean boost,
overdrive, fuzz, and a very musical EQ circuit.
MIDS-FREQ
The Mids and Frequency controls are borrowed
from the Chase Bliss Condor circuit, and infuse
the preamp with an extremely versatile active
parametric midrange control. This control boosts
or cuts middle frequencies on the device up
to 18dB. When the Mids fader is halfway up, it
neither boosts nor cuts any frequencies. Higher
positions boost the selected frequency, and lower
positions attenuate it. The frequency affected by
the Mids fader is selected by the Freq fader. All
the way down is roughly 150 Hz and all the way
up is a little over 4kHz.
FOOTSWITCH FUNCTIONS
PRESET/BANK
This button toggles between 10 saved presets (0-9 on the LED Display) for each bank. Holding down the PRESET/BANK button
selects between the three banks indicated by the Bank LED, which is unlit for the first bank of presets, RED for the second bank,
GREEN for the third bank. All 30 presets are accessible using only this switch, but MIDI control can offer more flexibility.
BYPASS/SAVE
Engaging Bypass toggles between whether the pedal is effecting incoming audio or not. Holding down the button will save
all audio and expression settings to the current preset. If you want to move and save the current settings to another preset
number, hold down the JUMP arcade and press the PRESET stomp to find the number you want and then hold the BYPASS
stomp to save it in that location. Movement between banks is allowable by holding down PRESET.
