I've been looking around for a nice little overdrive to put in front of my m5 and some other stuff. Suddenly, I remembered that I had a Danelectro Pastrami Overdrive sitting in a drawer, which I'd bought for guitar a long time ago when I was a poor student. I always liked it on guitar, but never tried it with bass. So I did some experimentation, and, hey, this thing sounds sweet! (More on that shortly.)
But that stock plastic housing is terrible, so even though it's ridiculous to spend good money to get a $20 pedal rehoused, I had fxdoctor set it up in a new enclosure with true bypass. He did a great rehousing job (highly recommended). I painted up that bad boy myself, added some nice chrome knobs from Radio Shaq, and looky at what I ended up with!
So how's it sound, then? I like, a lot. It loses a little low end, but not as much as you might expect, and it's very responsive to dynamics. I think I'll keep the gain at medium for the most part, but it gets into some cool fuzz territory when cranked, and I might use it like that as well. I made some clips, in case you're intrigued. Clips start off with the clean tone (I'm playing a fretted 4 with P pickups and an audere preamp) , then add gain progressively. Check out how synthy it gets at the end!
Pastrami Clips
In short, while I'm not sure I'd recommend that everybody go out and buy a pastrami and get it rehoused (there are probably other equally good overdrives out there for what you'd spend to do that), if you've got one lying around or need a nice compact, unique overdrive, this is definitely an option in play.
