Description
Think of the NTCT as a mini amp EQ living inside your guitar or bass cavity. Bartolini built this onboard preamp to deliver the kind of sweeping, musical tone shaping you’d expect from a classic Fender amp’s Bass, Treble, and Presence controls — except now it’s under your fingertips at the volume knob instead of across the stage.
The 400 Hz mid-cut is the star of the show here, letting you carve out boxy, honky midrange while keeping the low-mid warmth and top-end sparkle intact. Boost or attenuate each band aggressively; the range is wide enough to go from scooped and modern to fat and vintage without touching an amp dial.
Keep in mind the NTCT is voiced for medium-output passive magnetic pickups. Feed it a hot active pickup or one of the higher-output 4-string bass humbuckers and you risk pushing the input or output stages into distortion. If your pickups run hot, active signals attenuate cleanly without smearing their tone, but for high-output passive sets, step down to the lower-gain NTCT-B instead.
Running low-output pickups (under 30 mV)? Skip the workaround and go straight to the NTCT-H. Yes, wiring diagram 4 shows a method to boost the NTCT’s overall gain to compensate for weak signal, but the NTCT-H gets you there with more built-in headroom and noticeably less noise — no extra wiring gymnastics required.
- 3-band active tone control: Bass, Midrange, Treble
- 400 Hz mid-cut voicing
- 9-volt operation
- Best matched with medium-output passive magnetic pickups
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