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Ashdown filter review

Dec 22, 2004
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I took a test drive of one of these today, fully expecting to take one home. I even had the cash on hand. I plugged it into an Ashdown combo amp in the store and tried it with both a passive and an active bass.

First impressions were that the pedal didn't do much of anything. Took some knob tweaking to even start to get an actual filter sound. I couldn't get much out of it until I had spent considerable time tweaking.

What I ended up with was some nice tone but the signal would clipon the lower strings beofre the VU meter even registered past halfway. There was no where near enough of what I wanted from this pedal and it took so much effort to tweak just to get anything that I was really not digging it very much.

The pedal reacts so slowly and there is no way to adjust this. This means that you have to playing slower drawn out notes to hear the actual effect. Your either lost in mud or up at the top of the sweep where there is no low end.

This pedal was not at all what I expected. It looked nice and appeared to be well built. The VU meter doesnt light up and the knobs are hard to read as they're chrome with tiny little chrome markings.

I couldnt get any funky riffs going with this and was really disappointed as I had fully planned on buying it.

The Ashdown filter pales so much in comparison to my Mini Q Tron which is so easy to adjust and has such a warm liquidy warble to it that its hard to turn it off.

I'd be interested to hear what others think of the Ashdown. maybe I just didnt find the sweet spot for all the knobs but in the end, I grew tired of trying to find it.
 
You know, not always. I have always been fond of the old DOD FX25, which is super cheap. I have been shopping around for a new filter with better bypass and more tonal options, and seriously setting aside maybe $500 in my mind for that purpose. Then I recently got a blender-loop, and stuck the FX25 in the loop, blended in some of my clean tone, and... OMG! I'm totally happy. I'll record some samples this wkend.

Although, I guess the added cost of the blend/loop box means the FX25 is no longer cheap, and I am getting what I paid for. :p
 
i love blending envelope filter and clean signal! (in fact, i have a clip of me playing my AF9 blended into my clean via the VFB2... hard to tell from a computer clip, but it sounds sweet! it's in the "BargeConcepts VFB2" thread, if anyone's interested...).

about the ashdown.... i've repeatedly heard the same thing: that the input is a little too easily clipped, and that it takes a buttload of tweaking to get it to sound good. :hmm: