Sans Amp Programmable Bass Drive or Aguilar Tone Hammer ?

ManOnStreet · #1 07-11-2009, 06:14 AM

Hi folks !

I'm planing to buy my new pre-amp pedal, unfortunately, the place where i live doesn't have any musical store, so i asked a friend of mine (he live in Paris, France) to buy me one. But now, i'm stuck between the Sans Amp Programmable Bass Drive and Aguilar Tone Hammer, both look so impressive to me.
I mainly play Metal, but also do some funk.
Have any experience to share with me ? will be appreciated so much.

Thanks everyone
P/S: forgive me , i'm asian and i;m not good at English.

davedamage · #2 07-13-2009, 04:22 PM

I was in the process of searching it for you but it turned up so many threads that I wan't about to try and narrow it down to a few. Just search for sansamp and aguilar tonehammer. As far as turning up a bunch of results for the BDDI and not the programable, keep in mind that the only difference is that there are three channels on the PBDDI. The sounds are identical.

afroman · #3 07-13-2009, 10:17 PM

Well I think they are 2 very different units.
I've owned both.

SansAmp is better for imitating some other amp sounds, it has 3 channel of presets so it can be more useful to get different sounds within a live set, etc. It alters your bass tone more than the Aguilar, meaning that even set "flat", the sound changes from the bypassed bass sound.

Aguilar is more of a "preamp" preamp IME. Cleaner and more of a pristine sound that doesn't alter your bass tone unless you want it to.
The semi-parametric mids are awesome for shaping your sound and the AGS can go for subtle grit to full distortion. The only downside of the unit is the big volume difference between AGS and AGS-off mode.

Hope this helps a little.