D-TAR Mama Bear Acoustic Guitar Preamp

A preamp designed to restore the beautiful acoustic sound of your guitar.

The D-TAR Mama Bear Digital Acoustic Guitar Preamp is your secret weapon for capturing and reproducing all of your acoustic guitar's presence and rich tone. Even the best acoustic guitars deliver an oversimplification of true acoustic tone complexity when amplified. The D-TAR Mama Bear Digital Acoustic Preamp solves this problem using what they've named AGE technology. Mama Bear takes your guitar into the digital realm, neutralizes the pickup, and then restores the natural body resonance. The result: now the finest acoustic guitars can sound like, well—themselves. Only louder.

D-TAR - Duncan/Turner Acoustic Research

Seymour Duncan and Rick Turner are two legends who spent years working with musicians, perfecting their tone. Seymour founded his self-named company in 1978 which has become well-known for its wide variety of guitar and bass pickups used by just about every name player from Billie Joe Armstrong to Angus Young. Rick co-founded Alembic, was president of Gibson Labs West Coast R&D Division, co-founded Highlander Musical Audio making piezo acoustic guitar pickups for Lindsay Buckingham, Ry Cooder, David Lindley, and Andy Summers, and runs his own Renaissance Guitars. Now Seymour and Rick are working together to create innovative products for acoustic musicians. Their D-TAR motto: "With respect to acoustic tone."

•16 Position Input Source Selector—Provides 16 different digital filter choices to neutralize the sound of your pickup so the AGE technology can go to work

•16 Position Target Instrument Switch—AGE technology provides 16 amazing guitar sounds emulated from 16 amazing guitars, from parlors to super jumbos. Allows you to dial up the guitar that matches your guitar's body shape, or emulate other shapes

•"Input gain control with red Overload LED." Avoids overload distortion and allows minimization of noise when different pickups are used

•Bypass switch with LED indicator when in bypass mode. Hard-wire bypass to allow comparison of processed versus unprocessed sounds. LED alerts user when in bypass mode

•Output level control.—Gain match to next stage for best S/N performanc

•Balanced XLR output—For studio use with balanced-input mixing boards

•Hi-Z input stage—Works with Piezo pickups, great stand-alone preamp

•Chassis compatible with Equinox and Solstice.—Micro-rack system or two units in full rack mount

•+/12 volt supply for analog stages —Outstanding headroom performance

•Wet/Dry Blend Control—Allows "In Between" amounts of processing

•Ground lift switch.—For studio use with balanced-input mixing boards

•Phase switch—Allows reduction of feedback

•Mute switch.—For quiet guitar tuning or elimination of live connection noises

Features

16 Position Input Source Selector.
16 Position Target Instrument Switch.
Input gain control with Overload LED
Output level control.
Balanced XLR output.
Chassis compatible with Equinox and Solstice.
Hi-Z input stage.
Wet/Dry Blend Control
Ground lift switch
Phase switch
Mute switch.
Bypass switch with LED indicator when in bypass mode

Mama Bear Digital Acoustic Guitar Preamp Specifications:

Analog Characteristics
Nominal Input Level: 10dBu
Input Impedance: 4.7M Ohm
Gain, input to output: 15.5dB, bypassed
Maximum signal level before input stage clipping: 2.0Vrms
Nominal Output Level*: Single ended 0dBu, XLR Balanced: -20dBu
Maximum Output Level before clipping**: Single ended: 7.2Vrms, bypassed; 3.5Vrms through processor, Balanced XLR: 1Vrms, bypassed; 0.5Vrms through processor
Noise, 20 Hz to 20 KHz, bypass mode, referenced to input: -109 dBv, input shorted, -97.5 dBv, input open
Digital Characteristics
Microprocessor: 32 bit, 100MHz, floating point, 600MFLOPS
Sample Rate: 44.1KHz
Latency: 3ms
A/D Conversion:
24 bit
64x oversampling
S/(N+D): 94dB
Dynamic Range, S/N: 108dB
D/A Conversion:
24 bit
128x oversampling
24 bit 8 times digital filter
Ripple: ±0.005dB, Attenuation: 75dB
S/(N+D): 94dB
Differential outputs
Dynamic Range: 110dB, A weighted
Power Supply
Power Supply: External wall mounted transformer 16 VAC/560mA
Current Draw: 200mA @ power jack
* Nominal levels measured using pink noise generator set to 250mV rms. Input level control set to produce flickering of overload indicator; output level control set to maximum.
**Maximum output levels in bypass mode measured using 1KHz sine wave. Maximum output levels through processor measured using sine waves of various frequencies from 800Hz to 1.2KHz.