ADB3 Pickup Adapter

The Rice Audio® ADB3 Pickup Adapter is a standard high to low impedance adapter similar to the ADB1 but designed more for musicians and especially for Guitar players. The ADB3 has convienient operation from either phantom power or from an internal 9 volt battery. The ADB3 supports recharging an NiCad 9 volt battery from phantom power.

The ADB3 features a Butler dual JFET/BiPolar hybread preamp. This new technology combines field effect transistors and bipolar transistors in the input stage to achieve the speed and ultra high input impedance of a JFET amplifier but with a noise level only slightly higher than the best bipolar amplifiers. Older JFET amplifiers have a background noise level several times that of bipolar amplifiers. The result is an adapter than can perform well both directly with sensitive magnetic and piezo-electric sensors and also with already preamplified pickups and electronic instrument outputs.

As with the ADB1, the ADB3 differs from other manufacturers by supporting both balanced (3 conductor plugs) and unbalanced (2 conductor plugs) signal formats. Thus a balanced output device such as a dynamic microphone may be connected to the ADB3 input via an A3F to Tip-Ring-Sleeve (TRS) adapter cable. This can both improve the performance of the microphone and provide an on-stage gain adjustment.

By providing either gain or attenuation, sound engineers will find the ADB3 convienient for connecting unbalanced mixer or signal processor outputs to remote balanced mixer or amplifier inputs. The ADB3 has a high common mode rejection ratio (limited in range by the battery voltage) and that can be useful for eliminating hum due to ground faults in the power supply.

Feature List:

Strong compact lightweight die cast aluminum enclosure easily fits into instrument cases,
Ultra quiet and accurate wide range Butler input dual JFET audio preamplifier,
Operates on phantom power or from an internal 9 volt battery or both,
Supports recharging 8.2 volt NiCad batteries from phantom power,
Gain range from mute to +20 dB,
Balanced low impedance A3M output jacks can accept remote phantom power,
Alternate action switches for Ground Lift and Phase Invert,
An internal compensation switch will improve performance for many piezo-electic sensors,
Three LEDs indicate power status,
Dual common high impedance 1/4” input jacks are protected from phantom power circuits and can accept either balanced (3 conductor plugs) or unbalanced signals,
Available in several colors or in color coded sets,
Limited lifetime warranty