EBS Valve Drive - Initial Impressions

There's plenty of EBS Valve Drive critiques here, but I thought I'd add my own intial impressions. Why the hell not, right?

1) Damn this thing is big.

2) I guess putting the 12ax7 tube where it is, is for aesthetic reasons. There's no functional reason to have a tube sticking out and blazing, is there?

3) Damn this thing sounds good, especially in a band setting. It really does the warm overdrive thing better than any pedal I've used. Guess that tube does help. It also does the heavier crunch very, very well. For full on blazing distortion - not so much. (Then again, for that, I use a Sansamp GT2 - with noise reduction, of course.) But in gerenral, for mild to moderate crunch, it's very musical. I think EBS did a good job with the passive tone stack as well. Very little tweaking required, nice mids, no low-end loss, and no annoying artifact.

4) Nice features. REALLY like the db pad for active basses. I mostly play a Spector Euro 5 with EMGs and an Aggie preamp, and that's an essential for me. I tend to leave this engaged even with passive basses, with very little volume loss.

5) In comparison: I've used an Xotic Bass BB preamp for a while now, and while it's certainly not coming off my board (heresy!) I like the Valve Drive better. It just gives a nice warm, musical tone at almost any moderate setting. The BB preamp sounds just a tad thin in comparison, and the Valve Drive plays better with my active basses. What the BB Preamp IS good for is to add a little extra 'kick' in conjunction with the Valve Drive when I need it. That works REALLY well, as long as I keep the volume/gain settings on the BB Preamp VERY moderate - lest I blow something up.

I should also add that I use the 'Vintage' setting about 90% of the time. Without this, it seems - at least IMO - that the Valve Drive sounds like just any other pedal. Again, that's just my extremely subjective opinion. I like the low-mid boost that the Vintage setting gives, because, well, it sounds good, and I know that's what will get me heard in a band setting.

6) I compare the Valve Drive to the BB Preamp because I think that the BB Preamp is one of the best pedals out there for that 'SVT' kind of thing. (Way better than the VT Bass. Don't call me a hater.) I'm a HUGE fan of Xotic gear, so for me to say that something is better is a big step.

In comparison to the Sansamp BDDI, well . . . I won't be taking that off my board either. It has its uses (mostly as a DI), but again, the Valve Drive sounds better, IMO. Again, though, the Valve Drive plays very well with the BDDI in particular cases.

Overall . . . very, very impressed, considering I haven't been that impressed with other EBS pedals.

Side note: Prometheus Subdecay before the Valve Drive: lots of fun!!

[jhfishn]

Very nice post my friend!

I was leaning toward the EBS myself but just ordered an Aguilar Agro pedal.

A friend of mine has the EBS and he's been using it with a Mike Lull active J-Bass with SWR head and Dr Bass cabs and has an incredible tone combination with that.

I went with the Agro simply because I started using an Aguilar AG500 with 2 DB-112 cabs and even though the AG500 has the distortion channel ... I wanted to use it on the clean side to blend in with my other pedals ... and what the heck ... I can always use it with other rigs too.

But ... I got alot out of the testing you did and the write-up and had to say I appreciate it!

[RickenBoogie]

I love my Valve Drive so much, that when I foolishly sold it because of it's size, I bought it back and lost money. But, I've got it back, and won't let it go again. Best o/d for bass, ever.