Schatten Design MicroPre Preamp One Channel

My 40 year old preamp in my Ovation 1618 12 string had gone bad. I found the original Ovation replacement part to be ridiculous expensive. The MicroPre in combination with a stacked potentiometer is a very cost effective alternative, provided you are not scared using a soldering iron.

Installation: instructions are available online. For me a huge plus, cause it allows you to assess it pre-purchase. Diagrams are well documented and showing different installation options (volume only, volume + tone control). If you know how to solder, you can install it. Only downside is that the instructions don not include the tech specs for the volume/tone potentiometers and tone capacitor. Based on the pots sold by Schatten seperately I figured out that both volume and tone pot need to be 500K Ohm log versions. The tone capacitor needs to be 47nF.

Sound: Sounds good to me for live playing. I could not notice a significant difference between the original one and this one.

I've tried a number of eBay preamps for piezo installations and for which a Fishman is usually the 1st choice, however for installing a piezo under the saddles of a Vegatrem on a Strat I needed something really compact that would fit in the control cavity. The simple, compact Schatten single channel preamp-on-a-chip is functionally not as clever as a multi-control Fishman installation, but it is super compact, works and blends well with the magnetic pickups.