Quote:
Originally Posted by emjazz  Eric, care to share your thoughts on comparing the two MI Audio pedals? |
Thanks for reminding me, I've been busy with a bunch of stuff lately. I was comparing a keeley modded TS (the one with ALL the options), the blue boy and the tube zone. What I wanted was something with a basss-ier eq and less compressed sounding than my current fulltone bassdrive mosfet. The Keeley modded TS was ok, but didn't really stand out to me, it sounded a lot like the bassdrive (which makes TS clone sense). I was able to coax a good sound out of it, but it was a bit "cloudy".
I was really keen on the blue boy and was all set to keep it. I was able to get AN extremely bassy sound out of it, (if so desired - very tweakable, you can cut the mids, add extra mids, adjust the tone control accordingly, cut or add highs; there's A LOT you can do with this pedal; the character control adds bass as you turn it up, but also adds a compressed feeling at the same time). This pedal is clear sounding (moreso than the Keeley TS9 or the bassdrive) and you can adjust the compression. Sounds like exactly what I was looking for.
Then I went back to the store and also picked up the Tube Zone. The guy at the store described the tube zone as a higher gain blue boy and also Mi Audio's pride and joy. It is higher gain the the BB, but not rediculously so. At first, it was like plugging into any other OD pedal that cut all the bass, even when the Char. knob was maxed. Very dissapointing. I went back and read the directions. The tube zone has an internal trim pot that controls the "prescence" of the pedal. I went in and turned the "prescence" control all the way down. Then the bass was there.
After this point I spent A LOT of time A/B-ing the BB and tube zone. I ended up going with the Tube Zone due to the Charachter knob control. With the BB, it was almost as if in order to coax a tone that was bassy enough, I had to turn up the character knob. But that also added more compression. With the Tube Zone, I'm able to get enough bass out of it w/out the extra compression. I'm able to find more of a suitable balance between bass and compression with the TZ than the BB. As a result, the TZ also sounds even a little clearer then the BB as well.
But I am curious to try out a BB again Andy. I'd like to try and turn down the Char. knob to about 25-35%, but also turn down the Tone knob and then adjust the mids and highs accordingly. I think that might help with finding a more suitable balance. As I type this, and some more tweaking with a BB, I could still see a board with the BB (for low OD) and a TZ (for more OD). Please don't get me wrong, the BB is a damned fine OD pedal, def. one of the better ones.
Hope that was helpul and made some sense.
