Check out my signature for clips of the Fulltone PlimSoul.
One day I was browsing through Fulltone's website and saw this pedal. Being a huge fan of Peter Case and The Plimsouls I just had to get it. I did, however, do a little bit of investigating into it's potential with bass. I sent an e-mail to Fulltone asking what they thought. They didn't respond in 10 minutes, so I went ahead and bought it. FWIW, they still haven't responded.
In a nutshell, I'm somewhat disappointed with the pedal on bass (It's sounds great on guitar). However, I was so excited about the pedal (just for the name) that it probably couldn't ever meet my expectactions.
This being said, the pedal seems to lose some low end. You can turn the Hi-Cut knob fully counter clockwise to get the bass in there (see below), but then the pedal just gets kind of muddy. It doesn't sound bad. It would just never cut through in a band setting. The pedal is very high gain. It's similar to the AMT Communist Pig, but less bass friendly. In the clips, I don't even max out the distortion knobs. It gets too wild. I can't really do too much with it without muting. Clip 4 somewhat represents this.
The information below gives you some great detail on the pedal. If you have any questions or want some specific clips, let me know. Note: All clips were done with a passive PJ bass.
The Controls (Information from the Instruction Manual) Level: This knob controls the amount of signal (Volume) that exits the pedal. PlimSoul has about 30db of available gain . . . .
Sustain: This controls the amount of distortion for the first (Soft-Clipped) stage only. This stage consists of various types of diodes placed in the opamp loop to achieve a wildly asymmetrical waveform. Asymmetrical waveforms tend to be rich in even-order Harmonics, resulting in sweet overtones like you can get from an overdriven tube amplifier. The Sustain knob will get you way into Distortionland when it's set above 12 o'clock. You'll notice that it's softer, more compressed distortion when used by itself, meaning when the Stage 2 knob is turned OFF, which is achieved by turning Stage 2 full Counter Clockwise (CCW).
Hi-Cut: This tone knob affects only the high frequencies and you'll find the 3 o'clock position and beyond to be pretty much neutral depending on Sustain and Stage 2 settings. As you use higher gain settings, you may find that you'll lower the Hi-Cut by turning it CCW.
Stage 2: This little knob controls the Second Stage of Distortion, which consists of Symmetrically Clipped LED's to Vref (4.5 volts). Hard-Clipping tends to have a more percussive feel with tighter low-end response which is reminiscent of output tube distortion, similar to whay you'd get by driving old Marshall Plexi Amps at high volume. You are able to use Stage 2 in conjunction with Sustain to craft the texture of Distortion desired...or you can turn down Sustain and use only the Stage 2 distortion.
Stage 2 LED: This LED shows how much of teh Stage 2 clipping is being engaged. The higher (CW) you set Stage 2, the brighter and longer this LED glows. Conversely the lower (CCW) you set Stage 2, the LED glows dimmer. You will always see a tiny bit of this glow on this LED while playing (when you're in a dark room) as it is very sensitive to voltage but Stage 2 is not "in play" when Stage 2 knob is full CCW.
http://www.fulltone.com/stpframe.html
