Review: Fodera x Trickfish Preamp & Practice Amp

Fodera and Trickfish make natural collaborators. The relationship traces back in part to top-shelf bass player and electronics designer Mike Pope, whose onboard preamps became closely associated with Fodera beginning in the late ’90s. Pope had a lot to do with the company’s preference for clean, flexible electronics that complement rather than impose themselves on a bass — which makes sense considering the amount of care (and money) that goes into the average Fodera. While working with Fodera, Pope went on to collaborate on early Trickfish designs, and in more recent years, Fodera and Trickfish have formalized that shared lineage with the bass-version of the Fodera X Trickfish preamp, the latest iteration of Fodera onboard electronics. 

The Fodera X Trickfish Preamp & Practice Amp brings the essential sound of that design to a pedal format while adding a few useful features, like a DI and headphone amp, that wouldn’t make sense on a bass. At $750, it’s in a premium category for a preamp/DI, EQ, headphone amp, and practice tool, and there’s no denying the added attraction of making a version of the electronics associated with a holy grail brand like Fodera, especially for those of us without one in our arsenal.

INSIDE & OUT

Physically, it’s a cool piece of gear. The enclosure feels substantial, the white finish and distinctive butterfly logo are attractive, and the front-panel graphics are clear and legible. The knobs and toggle switches feel high-quality and appropriately durable, and the footswitches make a reassuring and positive-feeling click. The abundant LEDs are bright enough for a stage, and Fodera and Trickfish made thoughtful use of different colors and locations to communicate operating states. It’s a small detail, but one that makes the pedal easy to grok at a glance.

The main tone-shaping attraction is definitely the EQ. BASS and TREBLE are shelving controls, while LO MID and HI MID provide bell-shaped filters. More interesting is the way the MIDS footswitch interacts with the MID ON/OFF–MID SHIFT toggle. In MID ON/OFF mode, the footswitch simply engages or bypasses the mid filters. In MID SHIFT mode, however, it alternates between the LO MID and HI MID filters, bypassing whichever band isn’t selected. An LED next to the corresponding knob illuminates to indicate the active band.

Internal dip switches provide additional center-frequency options for the mid filters, which opens up a surprising number of possibilities. With sufficiently different settings for the two mid bands, the footswitch can produce a dramatic change in timbre rather than merely a modest EQ variation. It’s one of the pedal’s coolest ideas. Unfortunately, the frequency-selection switches are only accessed internally. Considering how central this flexibility is to the design, I’d much rather see them surfaced to the front panel. The ability to change the actual Mid Shift voices during a gig would make an already clever implementation that much more useful.

The EQ points themselves are well chosen. It’s easy to add heft without muddiness, bring forward low-mid thickness, emphasize upper-mid texture, or add some treble sizzle without making the instrument sound overly processed. Changes happen quickly and clearly, and the pedal has excellent transient response; there’s a flat, revealing quality to the sound that conveys an articulate and detailed vibe.

CLEAN & POLITE

That character extends to the preamp as a whole. The Fodera/Trickfish is clean — almost clinical. Experimenting with different Gain and Master relationships produces little of the compression, harmonic thickening, or grit available indicative in the current preamp-pedal trend. Instead, it’s more like a professional FOH input: low noise, low distortion, lots of clarity, and little overt personality of its own.

Whether you take that as a criticism comes down to your taste. If you’re the sort of player that wants their preamp to be a substantial contributor to your sound, you might find the Fodera x Trickfish a bit too polite. There isn’t much transformer-like density, tube-ish compression, or driven-console color waiting at the end of the GAIN control. Instead, it offers transient response, definition, and fidelity. 

The DI is similarly clean and sounds good, if slightly dull. I’d still prefer a transformer-balanced output at this price, if at least for galvanic isolation (if not some juicy color). More troubling is the PRE/POST switch itself: Changing its position while connected produces an audible DC spike at the DI output. In a recording setup or a live rig connected to a powerful PA, that’s the sort of thing that will make the sound guy even more grumpy than they probably already are. On a $750 professional preamp, I’d expect that transition to be quiet.

The headphone/practice features are more impressive. The headphone amp had no trouble driving my relatively power-hungry AKG K702s to a solid level while retaining good bass control and clarity. The AUX IN input audio is routed to the headphones but not to the 1/4-inch or XLR outputs, which creates a particularly useful secondary application: The pedal would be a great personal monitor mixer on an IEM gig, combining tracks or a monitor feed with the bass in the headphones while sending only the bass signal to FOH. There is, however, no independent headphone-volume control. The Master sets headphone level, while the relative level of the aux source has to be adjusted at the connected phone, computer, or other source. It works, but it feels unnecessarily awkward in a product with “Practice Amp” in its name. At minimum I’d like a dedicated headphone level, and ideally separate HP and Aux controls.

Inside, the electronics are neat and competently assembled using surface-mount components. The circuit is a typical modern analog preamp, with op-amp buffering and EQ, sensible filtering, and a robust dedicated headphone-output stage. There’s nothing exotic about the topology, but there doesn’t need to be. It’s a rational way to build a quiet, consistent, low-distortion preamp. The plastic PCB-mounted jacks are harder to get excited about for $750 bucks. They provide electrical isolation from the chassis, sure, but there are more mechanically substantial ways to accomplish the same thing.

The clearest construction miss is the method employed for battery retention, should you go that route (power via a 9–18V external supply is possible). The two 9-volt batteries simply occupy the open space between the main and footswitch PCBs, with a small strip of foam attached to the lid intended to hold them in place. In the unit I tested, they still rattle audibly inside the enclosure. Beyond feeling out of place in a $750 pedal, allowing two relatively heavy batteries to move around near circuit boards, connectors, and wiring seems like an avoidable long-term reliability headache. Even a simple battery cradle or additional foam support would have been preferable.

NOT CHEAP

Ultimately, the Fodera x Trickfish is an unassuming professional preamp with a genuinely interesting EQ scheme, hi-fi clarity, a potent headphone amp, as well as some clever shedding and IEM tricks up its sleeve. That said, it feels pretty expensive for what’s actually inside the box.

Some of the premium is obviously because it says Fodera on it and gives players access to an external version of the electronics found in some of the planet’s most desirable basses. For a player who values that connection, prefers a very clean and revealing signal path, and appreciates the unusual MID SHIFT implementation, the appeal is easy to understand. On the other hand, if you want color, “mojo,” maximum feature density, or straightforward value there’s definitely a host of alternatives to explore. 

Fodera X Trickfish Preamp & Practice Amp

$750

fodera.com