Two notes is first and foremost a team of music lovers who are all great admirers of musicians. Two Notes are highly qualified engineers, technicians, and musicians, whose purpose is to facilitate the life of guitar and bass players without infringing on their playing habits. Our mission consists of providing them with studio-grade products that are specifically designed for the guitar and bass.

From the moment we launched the Torpedo C.A.B., we believed it was possible to build a high-quality pedalboard to entirely replace a conventional tube amplifier system: the complete floor rig. Even with an almost limitless choice of available guitar effects, we always felt that finding a very good preamplifier in a pedal format was challenging. This is why Two notes are proud to premiere its tube preamplifier, Le Bass.

The selection of a preamplifier is the core of your overall tone and thus requires the greatest attention. When building a complete floor rig, only the very best will make the cut. The Two notes preamplifiers are a True High Voltage Design running internally at 200 volts to preserve the interaction between you and your guitar while working perfectly with your other effect pedals. Each of the four different versions deliver the unique tube warmth, dynamics, and the musical compression from the amps we know and love, now in a more convenient pedal package. And, of course, you can use them as an elaborate tube overdrive, in front of your favourite amplifier!

The A and B channels are totally independent, each with their own voicing and eq section: Bass and Treble on A, Bass, Mid with Mid Sweep and Treble for B. On Channel A you will find a lower gain tube stage with a pre-gain EQ using a more vintage design approach, while Channel B offers more gain and a very powerful post-EQ (with mid sweep). The exclusive Fusion modes open new horizons.

In “Hot Fusion”, A and B are cascaded, meaning A can be used as a boost for B with both A and B EQ’s available to shape the result. In “Cold Fusion”, the two channels are in parallel, meaning you can blend the cleaner sound from A and your more distorted sound in B to gain clarity and articulation.

Each preamp features 2 channel footswitches, A and B. Simultaneously pressing A and B will activate the Fusion mode. Pressing A, B or A and B will also send a specific Midi Program Change command, that can be used to select a preset on your Midi multi-effects and/or Torpedo C.A.B.

In addition, the preamplifier may respond to a Program Change sent from another Midi device allowing a seamless integration into any pedalboard switching system. Combining several Two notes preamps on your pedalboard makes things really interesting. Connected via Midi, each preamp will listen to the others. They can be configured in Multi-channel mode: pressing A on preamp 1 will bypass preamp 2, like the channels of an amplifier. Alternately, when this mode is off: traditional on/off switching for all preamps, a preamp can be a boost/overdrive for the one that follows.

You will find in this table a description of the volume, tone and channel selection options.

By pressing simultaneously the A and B switches, you will enter the Fusion mode. When the Fusion mode is activated, pressing A and B again will defeat your Le Preamp.

The Cold Fusion puts the Channels A and B in parallel. In other words, you will be able to adjust the level of Channel A that will be added to the output of Channel B. This technique consisting in adding a clean signal to a more distorted one is widely used in the studio to regain dynamics and articulation when the dirty sounds can be too compressed for example. The Fusion knob must be carefully adjusted and we recommend starting very low on this value and increasing gradually.

The Hot Fusion puts the Channels A and B in cascade. In this configuration, the Channel A can be considered a boost for the channel B, and the Fusion knob determines the amount of boost signal you send into B.

The gain on the channel A will be very important and it is the addition of this gain and the Fusion amount that will determine the overall distortion you will get. The channel A features an EQ, and changing the EQ will play a huge role in the overall tone. If you push the bass your sound will get more fuzzy, and if you push the treble you will have a more glassy distortion. With these very simple settings you will discover many tonal options! Always keep in mind that the sweet spot is rarely on the maximum values, take the time to increase each parameter gradually. Sometimes it’s better to have the Fusion knob at a lower value and increase the gain on channel A, remember these settings are very sensitive.

The Mid Sweep is a very powerful tonal option. It can be used either to boost or to attenuate a medium frequency range. A good way to start with that function is, first, to set your Mid level to the max, then search for the frequency you want either boost or attenuate by adjusting the SWEEP level. When you hear that frequency, you can either lower a little the mid level or keep it that way for a medium boost, or strongly attenuate the frequency by decreasing the Mid level.

The Le Preamp can be used in various configurations: as a boost or distortion pedal for your amplifier, as a preamplifier connected to a power amplifier and cabinets, or in a direct setup for recording, playing on stage or simply at home with your headphones. The following diagram presents the various possible connections of the Le Preamp. Please note that this diagram doesn’t show all the wiring possibilities of the product, just the most common ones.

You can, in fact, they were specifically designed to work together! Please refer to the following figure. On this figure you will find, in green, the MIDI connections, and in blue the audio connections. When connecting several Le Preamp with MIDI for the first time, switching on a preamp channel will defeat the other preamps. We call it the Multi-channel mode: having more Le Preamp is like adding channels on an amplifier, and it’s as simple as using a channel footswitch on a traditional multichannel amplifier. When connecting several Le Preamp with a MIDI cable, make sure you use a 5-pin DIN cable with all the pins wired. Some cables only have pins 4, 2 and 5 connected. Pin 1 and 3 are used to carry the Multi-channel message.

Regarding the effects position:

1. Before the first preamp, we put all the effects we may want to apply to any Le Preamp in the chain. It could be a distortion pedal, a compressor, a volume pedal, anything you can put in front of an amplifier.
2. In the FX loop of each preamp, we put the effects we want to apply only to one of the preamps. For example, a specific delay we want only on Le Preamp 2.
3. Finally, after the last preamplifier, we put all the global effects that are usually better sounding after the preamp stage: modulation or reverb effects, a speaker simulator such as the Torpedo C.A.B., and stereo effects. By placing the stereo effects at the end of the chain, the next device (mixer, stereo power amp, recorder etc…) can be fed by a stereo signal.