hey yo i juz registered as a new member and i juz found this forum recently im lookin for a bass overdrive pedal like some of ya do i saw quite a lot people recommending this pedal for overdrive im lookin for the warm tubey, and lil bit crunchy, drive sound of the tube screamer on bass, my question is,does DOD 250 right for me?if not,can u guyz give a suggestion? or mayb a guitar pedal will do the job? i dont expect it to keep the bottom end like the boss odb-3 but i certainly dont want a huge loss. PS:i dont want fuzz nor distortion so odb-3 and big muff are outta topic.the odb-3 is far too noisy and fuzzy for me thx everyone for reading my maybe-repeated-1000times thread
hi, welcome to talkbass! The 'is this right for me?' question is a tricky one to answer, since we all hear things differently. Personally, the 250 lost a little too much bass for my liking. Other people feel differently. It costs around $40 new ,why not order from somewhere like musicians friend which has a 45 day return period? The Voodoo Labs Sparkle Drive is a great pedal for that T/S sound. It lets you blend wet and dry signal, so you don't have to lose bass.
As noted above we all hear stuff differently and yeah the 250 does suck out the low end, drastically at higher settings. If you want a nice touch of drive I think its great. Especially if you play with some dynamics. When you dig into the strings it gets a really nice tone, at least on my P-bass it does. Though I may have to retire mine soon, I think its on the fritz and I am playing a pretty low tuning that it does not seem to like. My plan is to buy a loooper with a blend knob. I think this will do the trick, we shall see.
It's really easy to mod effects such as this to keep the low end though. Check out www.diystompboxes.com for help in doing this. And if you have two amps you can split the singal using another pedal/line spiltter to have one amp for dirty, one for clean.
PJ is correct. It seems that the ideal bas overdrive pedal is some kind of opamp with diodes clipping, but the key factor is a very flat frequency response. There are a million diode clippers... stick some bigger caps in there and it'll most likely sound good on bass.
If you don't wanna DIY, I highly recommend the R. Keeley-modified Blues Drive from here: http://www.robertkeeley.com/product.php?id=14 I've had one for a year and I still love it. If you want to do it yourself, he lists the changed parts right on that page (near the bottom). It's perfect for adding just a touch of overdrive without killing any low end. It cleans up nicely when you play softer.
I just checked this out, now I am interested. Tell me a little more would ya? What kind of music do you play? What is your setup? Have run a 5 string through it? Thanks.
