So I've been fiddling with this thing and reading up on various threads about it and I'm still a bit perplexed. Maybe someone who really knows how this stuff works can enlighten me.
I set the trim pot for my bass' output.
I tried using just the octave down with the filter section set for "bypass" (or maybe unity is a better word) and while the octave gets pretty garbled as I move down from A it doesn't distort. If the guitar slider is mixed in I can play an open B that sounds just fine although not as fat in a relative way as the B above. Likewise, the octave up and square wave don't cause any undue clipping below A.
The unwanted distortion seems to be from the filter section. The higher the trigger slider the lower the headroom. I can get a clean E with some settings. So what's the deal? Why does this filter clip like this? I know the octaves etc can contribute but people play octaves and fuzzes into envelope filters all day long without them clipping.
Why can't they make this pedal work better in the lower register?
I am not an expert. My theories are far from fact.
I always thought that it sounded like the noise gate was the problem. Like some filtering before the gate caused it to not register as sound so it cut out. That was the conclusion I jumped to and just worked around it.
It's not the cutting out at the end that gets me, although I'm not crazy about that either, but the unappealing distortion below A.
I wasn't clear. When I was messing with the trimpots to get it right, I could get it to track lower with a higher input gain. It would hold but to get it to do that, it would distort the whole signal no matter where on the neck I played. As I dropped the gain lower it would start to distort and then cut out at higher and higher notes. I thought the gate was opening and closing very quickly before it just closed, and it was this opening and closing action that caused the distortion sound.
Hmmm, which version do you have? I have the XO with only one internal trimpot. I'm not even sure why there's a gate. It is a strange kind of distortion, kind of fluttery, so it may be the gate. I wonder how different it would sound without one, or if it could be upgraded. Anybody out there know any more about this?
Why does the BMS distort below A? 
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