distortion & octave bass

slurpy · #1 03-31-2010, 08:50 PM

first off the pedals i am running into each other are a big muff and a digitech bass synth wah. the bsw is set to octasub (mode 7) so when i play a note it recreates the note an octave lower and plays both the low and the high note at the same time, gives me a nice fat sound. my question is

is it better (sound wise) to run my big muff into my bsw, or bsw into big muff?

if i run big muff first it gives me a distorted high note and a clean low note,
where as if i run bsw first it gives me distorted low and high.

i guess what im querying is what is the more common sound for alt rock music (think silversun pickups, muse, or a dirtier franz ferdinand)

im leaning towards big muff first so the low bass pulsates like a bass should but theres a distored high note cutting through as well. what are your thoughts?

Mark Olson · #2 03-31-2010, 09:11 PM

Personally I like running the octave before the fuzz. Especially with digital octaves like the BSW, the fuzz can help cover up the artificiality of the octave tone. But that's me. You can do it whichever way you want. With some octavers the tracking is better with the dirt after the octave though, because all of the harmonic content of a fuzzed out sound going into the octaver can confuse it a bit. You'll have to see if that's the case with the BSW, it's been a long time since I've owned one so I don't remember.