BH1K Guide 04272105
8
Bullhead 1K
Your amplifier is essentially the brain and brawn of your rig. The head determines the potential volume and
dynamic range before distortion, let’s you shape and contour the sound, and routes the signal to multiple
locations. A good head layout should be logical and easy to operate on stage. And when on you’re on the gig you
shouldn’t have to compromise your playing style to accommodate the shortcomings of the amp. We’ve all
experienced that moment in the middle of a tune when you’re staring at the amp and thinking “
What knob can I
possibly turn to make this sound good?”
The Trickfish team has put all of our experience and skill into making the
Bullhead 1K
a truly musical piece of
equipment. The design goals were modest: build a pre-amp that had the lowest noise floor possible so when we
record it’s nice and quiet, employ powerful EQ’s so we can shape the soun
d in the most musical way possible and
utilize a stout, no-
nonsense power amp that delivers when you’re digging in and pouring on the heat. We kept it
simple and clean so that it would be easy to operate on stage
–
big knobs that are easy to grab and full size
switches to minimize fumbling.
We spent the money on very high quality components and deliberately skipped many of the on-board effects and
signal processing features found on a lot of amps because to add them would raise the overall price. As players
ourselves if we want compression we’ll go buy a really good compressor; if we want an octaver or analog filter,
we’ll go buy the real deal
.
It’s actually pretty simple –
great tone in a lightweight, durable package that’s at home
on any stage or in any studio. When you have a chance to get familiar with this head we hope you’ll agree that
we’ve met our goals and built something pretty unique
.
How the Bullhead Works
There’s just 3 meaningful sections to any bass head:
1.
The Instrument Input and Gain section
:
a.
A common misconception is that this is just a jack where you plug the bass in and volume knob
–
it is, but it’s really much more. This is the first block in building what is commonly called “Gain
Structure”. The signal (your instrument) plugs into the jack
and depending on where you adjust
the input sensitivity - in the case of our amps it is labeled
“
HI/LOW
”, and here is where you set
the first block of gain in the amplifier. The Bullhead input is designed to accept a wide range of
sources from passive to active instruments as well as from a piezo acoustic bass pickup. This
input is AC coupled to prevent unknown sources from damaging the input circuitry with DC or
spikes.
b.
The
Gain Control
sets the gain level into the EQ. If you under-power the signal into the EQ
section you just won’t have enough voltage to get the EQ to work to its fullest potential and
you’ll add noise. Over
-
power the input to the EQ section and you’ll simply have distortion. By
adding EQ you also increase the Gain. On the Bullhead we’ve
included a multi-segment LED
ladder that shows you just how much gain created after you’ve adjusted the input attenuator,
gain knob and EQ. *
Tech Geek Stuff) Input gain is staged in a special multiplicative arrangement.
The first stage is a fixed gain multiplier and the second is a continuously variable gain control. The
gain OR attenuation in the input stage is achieved actively. As the Input gain control is increased,
the gain produced is multiplied by the fixed gain in the first stage. The advantage is that neither
stage is burdened with the duty of producing all of the input gain. This allows the already high
performance circuits to operate very comfortably without strain. The gain components chosen are
capable of performance that exceeds those found in the majority of bass preamps on the market
by factors of 10, and often by 100. The result is a super quiet, super clean signal path.
2.
The EQ Section:
Before we dissect the EQ circuit it should be noted that there are a couple schools of
thought on running the EQ section of any audio device but for simplicity sake, let’s discuss bass amps.
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