HBE Germania Treble Booster SOUNDCLIPS

[Mark Olson]

Ok so I have one of these and since there's pretty much no information about this pedal or treble boosters on bass I thought I'd pitch in.

What a treble booster does is boosts the hell out of some treble, specifically for the purpose of brightening up old british guitars/amps and distorting the crap out of a tube amp. Though there have been a lot of people to get good results with a treble booster used in conjunction with single coil pickups and brighter amps like Fenders or Vox. But if you're trying to push something with a treble booster that won't push back, you will be sadly disappointed. Also the treble booster, like a lot of fuzzes, isn't supposed to play well with buffers (it's supposed to get very thin sounding) but I haven't tried any buffers to verify this for myself.

You can kind of push certain dirtboxes if they have an amplike enough response to bounce back with the treble booster. It's not the real deal, but I think it sounds kind of cool:

http://media.putfile.com/Germania2

That's the Germania pushing my Box of Rock by the way. It's not translated so well in the soundclip but that sound has some serious bite.

Ok how about just the Germania, with an Ampeg head set pretty clean without it:

http://media.putfile.com/Germania1

You can hear how the Germania pushes that amp hard. The distortion comes from the amp, not the pedal, and has the characteristics of the amp's distortion, kind of ratty and fuzzy. But anyway, take a listen and let me know what you think!

[Pushead]

It sounds pretty cool!!!

More G.A.S.! But still I couldn't forget the other cool pedals that you post samples... MXR Classic Fuzz, Box Of Rock,...

So all your post are a source of G.A.S.!

[Mark Olson]

I'm sorry! I'm mostly just looking for feedback on the sounds I'm getting. But that Box of Rock is something else. It's seriously got "my" tone with my SG Bass. When I gig with it I'll only turn it off one or two times a night.

[Mark Olson]

If anyone cares these samples were done with the SG Bass with both pickups maxed, not just the bridge pickup like some of my other samples. Amp was an Ampeg V4BH, 2 x 12 cab, SM 57 mic.

And I'd really like to hear from some of you if you have any opinion on that first soundclip with the treble booster into the box of rock. I kind of like that sound. It's like a sonic assault. Good for ripping some leads. I'm seriously considering putting the treble booster on my board or getting an analogman bass beano boost so I would appreciate any feedback, positive or negative.

[Mark Olson]

I kind of liked how this sounded so I ordered an Analogman Beano Boost and asked him to optimize it for bass, which he says he can do by just changing up some caps. I'm curious to see how these will compare and I just thought I'd let you all know in case anyone else was curious too.

[Ryan Mohr]

It definitely sounds great pushing the box of rock because the box of rock is supposed to be treated like an amp, so the treble booster gives it more distortion, and fuzzes it up a little.

[Mark Olson]

With the Germania just into the amp the sound is very trebly, obviously, but the Box of Rock's tone circuit seems to tame the treble a lot... kicking the treble booster on in front of the Box of Rock just gives you a lot more bite and distortion suitable for a crazy lead sound, but the sounds have a surprising amount of continuity.

I didn't do any clips of lo fi mode though because lo fi mode is pretty thin and weak on bass. The Hi Fi mode has a lot better bottom, but I'm curious to see how this bass adjusted Beano Boost does. It says on analogman's beano boost page that the bass adjusted beano boost has a setting that retains all of the bottom, but doesn't have as much crunch. May still get a pretty thunderous sound.