ebs multidrive. smooth, thick OD. its sweet, it adds crunch and dirt, but still keeps the bottom as heavey as ever
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Adding overdrive without losing bottom end
- Thread starter jcburn
- Start date
For one box that does it all, get an Aguilar AGRO. I don't know what the circuit actually does, but it sounds as if it blends in clean bottom and also shelves the distorted signal above 4k or so, eliminating the staticy extreme high frequency that comes from basically any clipping circuit (12" guitar speakers filter this out). You can also get a very wide range of distorted sounds with all that EQ.
Blending is key for keeping your bottom end clean and punchy while you mess up the mids and highs, but the problem of strange high frequency energy coming out of your tweeter (and the PA) remains a problem since it can sound bad even at very low blend levels.
If you're using a rock rig with no tweeter, and are going to mic the cab when playing live, then a barge concepts blender with guitar distortions is great. A DS-1 as a grindy boost stage into a TS-9 is my favorite.
The sparkle drive would take care of the blending and TS-9 sound, but you loose the ability to ninja boost it.
The fulltone is cool for a vintage midrange sound, but I couldn't get the kind of modern distortion sounds I like from it. Maybe the "mosfet" edition would help there.
The EBS is pretty good, but sucks a bit of tone when bypassed, and isn't particularly versatile despite the 3-position switch (only the normal mode sounds good IMO).
If you're ever going to go direct, or just want to avoid a lot of hassle, just get the AGRO.
Blending is key for keeping your bottom end clean and punchy while you mess up the mids and highs, but the problem of strange high frequency energy coming out of your tweeter (and the PA) remains a problem since it can sound bad even at very low blend levels.
If you're using a rock rig with no tweeter, and are going to mic the cab when playing live, then a barge concepts blender with guitar distortions is great. A DS-1 as a grindy boost stage into a TS-9 is my favorite.
The sparkle drive would take care of the blending and TS-9 sound, but you loose the ability to ninja boost it.
The fulltone is cool for a vintage midrange sound, but I couldn't get the kind of modern distortion sounds I like from it. Maybe the "mosfet" edition would help there.
The EBS is pretty good, but sucks a bit of tone when bypassed, and isn't particularly versatile despite the 3-position switch (only the normal mode sounds good IMO).
If you're ever going to go direct, or just want to avoid a lot of hassle, just get the AGRO.
I'm not sure if they'll deliver the sounds mentioned above, but the BOSS ODB-3 and the Digitech Bass Driver both have blend knobs. They're not the same beast, so I would demo those along with the Sparkle drive if you have the opportunity.
The ebs multidrive only distorts the higher frequencys leaving the bass unaltered, I have one and it sounds wonderfull.
Based on the SansAmp simulation in my Bass PODxt (they call it something else), I'd say the SansAmp is what you want. I use it specifically to get more bottom-end on a couple of my patches.
The problem with Guitar distortion is that they approach square-wave patterns, which theoretically have an infinate number of upper harmonics. Square-wave can be produced from sine-waves by "infinate" sine-wave harmonics. The higher the harmonics you add, the more square the waveform.
Think "Jimi Hendrix"...
The problem with Guitar distortion is that they approach square-wave patterns, which theoretically have an infinate number of upper harmonics. Square-wave can be produced from sine-waves by "infinate" sine-wave harmonics. The higher the harmonics you add, the more square the waveform.
Think "Jimi Hendrix"...
