Well, Its been a while since I wrote down what I thought of a new pedal I picked up, but I'm not sure this one's gonna stick around so here's some brief thoughts. Sorry about the inability to describe sounds. The terms make sense to me, but I'll try to explain them better if someone doesn't see what I mean.
First thing I noticed when I plugged this
pedal in was the huge range of gain settings. From barely there and transparent to nice and crunchy... then the boost kicks in and takes it into some great high gain settings. I found it to be relatively "transparent" at most of the reasonable gain settings as the bass's character managed to show through. Definately colored the tone, in a feedback-ish kind of way, but not overpoweringly.
The low loss issue wasn't as obvious as it could have been. The warmth control clouded the issue a bit for me. In the end I decided that the warmth control felt like it added more low mids back in than lows. My tone still felt hefty, but the lows seemed almost "loose" or "sloppy". Not a huge issue, and I don't think that it was significant enough to be a huge downside, but thats how it felt through headphones and at loud appartment levels. I don't think the clips really show this too well as my clean tone always seems WAY thicker than it is in real life when I record direct. I find less noticible difference in the lows playing normally through a cab.
The decay of the notes was great, and really like the dynamics of it. I can get clean-ish and a little drive when I dig in, with some great grit if I slap all at the same gain setting. Kick on the boost and there's still some preservation of the dynamics, but the drive stays even enough that the notes decayed pretty naturally.
The clean boost was pleasant, and had a pretty useful range. I think the fact that it can be used independantly was a huge selling point for me. $210 for a drive and boost seemed like a reasonable buy to me considering the quality. There's a bright switch that adds some highs in if you want them... I think the cuttoff must be pretty high up there though. It adds a little bit of that feedbacky overtone when on, and wasn't excessively harsh even with a tweeter on. I think at jamming/band volumes it might get a little obnoxious though... Without a tweeter I think it'd just add another subtle dimension to what you already dialed in.
The cons were pretty limited... The biggest flaw I could find was that the warmth control needed to be pretty high to sound good. The usefull range on guitar is huge, but on bass it cuts your lows out pretty quickly. The only other thing that I could complain about was the low gain tone. I think I've been wrecked by my BJFE drives for this application as this just didn't quite have the character that the BJFE pedals did at low gain playing fingerstyle. I couldn't exactly describe how though, and considering the price difference I don't think it was that much of an issue. I think maybe something that worked well for the high gain settings just didn't quite translate to low gain use exactly the way I'd have wanted. It beat them in terms of not rolling off the highs though; slap and pick playing could get some nasty grit that I have trouble dialing in on my blueberry.
So, overall, I'm really happy with this pedal. I think that if I keep it around it'll be one of my main "grab one pedal and go" options. If you play guitar and bass, this is a great option as it just gets more versitile when you aren't worried about loosing lows.
I'll post more if I think of it, but thats all I can stand to write now. If there's anything I missed, just ask and I'll try to answer if I can. Here's some
clips to end with... info is in the description for the song, and the only thing I forgot to mention was that for the low tone and the gain clips the warmth control is maxed out, and the bright switch is off for everything.
Add me to the list for a bottle of Makers Mark!
