Aguilar Agro. Need more opinions...

I don't own one, but I've heard some great tones from others. If I had some spare $ id definitely get, as I'm a gain geek. Depends on your likes and your equipment.

 

I have one, excels at high gain/distortion in my opinion but very good for overdrive as well. The Agro has a very unique character. A lot going on in the mids. Few complain about low end loss but I dont hear it, it could be do to the obvious bump in the mids and improper makeup gain settings. Anyways I really dig it at full on saturation, sounds like no other pedal I have played before. Check out basstheworld.com Aguilar Agro demo, it's a short demo but nails the Agro at its best. Norm Stockton also does a review of the Agro on lower OD sttings. Sorry unable to link the video from my phone. Good luck!

 

As you can imagine, doing a search on here will yield a TON of information about it. There are also a lot of excellent YouTube demos of this pedal, so you are in pretty good shape in terms of having access to advance data.

Prices on them used are super reasonable IMO, and Aguilar gear is hard to beat in terms of reliability, so it is probably a safe purchase to make.

This seems to be the general consensus on the tone, that the richness of the mids gives a perceived low end loss to some, but there really isn't any, at least that's what @johnk_10 says and I believe him because he's a genius.

I've not had the pleasure of owning one of these yet, but I'm sure some day I shall.

 

It was too dark for me, but would probably be perfect for some.

The B3K may be too much for others, but I have found its' bright sheen and prodigious upper mids to work wonders in a mix. And it has more bottom as well.

 

I couldn't find a happy place with it. Maybe it was the ways I had it set but I thought it lost some low end, too much for my taste.

 

No low end issues for me. Playing with both the contour and presence together can change the voice of the overdrive quite a bit. Read the manual so you understand what frequencies these 2 knobs impact.

 

I didn't care for it, lost too much low end and kinda got lost in the mix because it's so compressed. It just lost..something...right where I needed something to be. It's just not an 'open' sounding distortion. Now the Creation Labs Grizzly...there's a great sounding pedal!

 

Too dark?! There's tons of treble boost available in this pedal.

It's one of the few pedals that excels at low and high gain, one of my favourite light overdrives in fact. But it is very coloured, almost like an amp sim, so not the best pedal to be stomping on and off mid song. The only thing that bugs me about it is the noise; even at low gain and the presence down, there is always a background white noise hiss. I don't notice it so much through my amp as I don't use tweeters, but direct to headphones it's pretty bad.

 

Doug felt the same was as me. That's what originally got me interested in his pedals. I came across a post by him on my tone search that was the opposite of what most people said.

It boosts the wrong frequencies for me. (They are higher than Darkglass, maybe?). Darkglass seems to bring out bass guitar attack better than most pedals out there.

Here's the post. He seems to also be talking about blending too, but I blend my B3K quite wet.(75-80%) And now I blend my VMT right in front of it at 50%.

Is the Agro for me? Looking for overdrive/distortion.

 

Yes it is dark. The pedal has an low pass filter which reaches 0db at 6kHz, so sounds really clossed/dark.

 

Different definitions of dark then I guess. My cabs roll off at 5kHz, so I can still think of a pedal as bright if it rolls off at 6! The pedal has a lot going on in the clank region and beyond, I definitely wouldn't equate it to muddy or dark like I would an SFT or Blueberry. But yeah, if you use tweeters and want that sizzle up top this might not be the pedal for you.

 

I dig the Agro A LOT. IMO, there's no low end loss, and it's definitely not too dark. it's OD/dirt tone is excellent.
I found the VMT too dull & dark and the B3K changed my overall tone too much (with weird mid scoop and too much sizzle on the top end), so I prefer the agro over both of them by a large margin.

here's a freq chart of the agro that I took:

 

Ooooh I like the looks of that a lot - nice low mid bump, *mild* upper mids roll off, good low end, no silly highs...its bumped up on the list!!!

 

I use this pedal at low gain as my amp sim for headphone practice, therefore the roll off is most welcome.

Just tested the white noise issue again - even with my bass volume turned all the way down and this pedal is the only thing in the chain, switching it on adds hiss. Tried the Vulcan, also some hiss but to a lesser extent. Bearfoot Uber Bee - totally silent! Not scientific testing by any means though of course...

 

i found a few balance tricks.
low gain settings = bring the presence down and keep the contour up. this keeps definition and low end
higher gain settings = because you start getting compression and added mid harmonic content from the gain structure, you can bring the presence back up without low end loss (obviously you should stop if it gets too bright), and the contour can come down to scoop out some of the extra mids that develop.

i'm pretty happy with it.

 

I probably should have said "muddy" but I also like a very sharp attack. I actually still boost upper mids with an eq pedal, upgraded my Ric's pickups to brighter ones, put in a no-load tone pot and a 10meg volume pot on the bridge pickup to enhance the attack even more. With this setup I can still turn down the high-end on my amp and play right along with easy listening music and get the right tones still.

One thing you said about the VMT that I agree with is that it has almost too much low-mids(it's like the opposite as the B3K with its' high-mids). Although the B3K is my favorite of the two, my absolute best tone is blending a small amount of the VMT into the B3K.

 

Had one with a Putnam clean blend mod installed for a long time. Really nice drive tone, but it isn't the kind of pedal you can switch on and off mid-song. And even with the clean blend mine had, the bump in the mids still made the low end sound diminished by comparison. As an always-on OD, it's magnificent. It strikes a really nice middle ground between the VMT and B3K, while (I feel) sounding more natural/organic than either.

 

Dirt pedals are cheap, widely available used, so reliable warranties dont matter, easy to flip, highly personal, and rediculously hard to describe. Buy your top 5, spend time with them, and flip whatever you dont love.

Be sure to try both before and after your comp. makes a huge difference.