Damnation Audio Fan/Appreciation Thread

[Maxfenderbass]

Found a used MBD1 up here in Canada.
Jeezus tapdancing christ.
This thing Dooms. Sludges. Rocks. Then it became sentient and started inventing new sub-genres.

Ive always had 2 problems with bass pedals.
1. The lows would become too saturated and 'bloom' or 'sag' and I lose articulation. I.e. I love how muffs distort, but not how loose they sound.
2. The clean blend would be too harsh.

The MBD solves both with the depth and low pass blend! I thought X-Over style distortions would be the answer, but I do like my lows saturated a bit...

On to my next quest:

What do I stack into my MBD?

Ive been using a TC Grand Magus. Its actually a pretty solid bass distortion at high gain settings. It add lows back in as you crank the drive, it reminds me of an OCD style dirt.

However, it does not stack well with the MBD at high gain. It gets too saturated and loses definition.

At low gain the distortion into MBD sounds amazing! Lots of 'crunch', definition, and gets hairy (remember... I love muff distortion. Hairy is goood.). Buuut it loses low end.

I tried an OCD v2. Good enough bottom end at low gain.. but it doesnt clip the MBD in the highs/mids as much.. hence, not enough hair..

Considering an EHX battalion. It has EQ control over both the distortion and clean. I figure I can can dial in a bit of extra low on my clean, crank the mosfet distortion up a bit, and blend it slightly in for extra hair.

Thoughts or experiences with other pedals? Here are my settingsView attachment 3698075

I had good luck shoving a micro amp into it for more.

 

[Grahams Groove]

On to my next quest:

What do I stack into my MBD?

Ive been using a TC Grand Magus. Its actually a pretty solid bass distortion at high gain settings. It add lows back in as you crank the drive, it reminds me of an OCD style dirt.

However, it does not stack well with the MBD at high gain. It gets too saturated and loses definition.

At low gain the distortion into MBD sounds amazing! Lots of 'crunch', definition, and gets hairy (remember... I love muff distortion. Hairy is goood.). Buuut it loses low end.

I tried an OCD v2. Good enough bottom end at low gain.. but it doesnt clip the MBD in the highs/mids as much.. hence, not enough hair..

Considering an EHX battalion. It has EQ control over both the distortion and clean. I figure I can can dial in a bit of extra low on my clean, crank the mosfet distortion up a bit, and blend it slightly in for extra hair.

Thoughts or experiences with other pedals? Here are my settingsView attachment 3698075

If you're looking for more hair and saturation in the mids/hi-mids, try rolling the MBD's tone knob up a bit. You may even find that you can back the gain off a bit as well, because the saturation will be more noticeable in those higher frequencies and you'll get more note definition.

The tone knob is a tilt EQ that centers around 300 Hz with the "shift" switch down, or 600 Hz with the "shift" switched up. So right now you're rolling off a bit of everything above 600 Hz. Playing with the shift switch and tone knob will pretty drastically change the character of the drive sounds. The thing I love is that I like the tone knob somewhere in the 2-3:00 range with slightly lower gain, and then I can use the depth to make that dirty side sound 'bigger'.

Also, if you are losing low end when pushing another distortion into the MBD, try backing off the MBD's gain and/or volume, and bring in some more clean on your MBD. Because of how well the clean side is low-passed, I can roll it in to 12-1:00 without it sounding like a huge overall signal boost. It just brings in fundamental and keeps higher gain stuff from feeling mushy...

 

[JimboP]

Well...now I want a loop blender for all my other dirt - even the stuff that has a clean blend.

Anyone tried the bloop with darkglass pedals that have their own blends? I'm interested in toying with running my AOU fully 'wet' and blooping it for more low end, even though the AOU's strong suit is mids/low mids.

I don't own any Darkglass, but I Bloop all my dirt pedals, even those with clean blend (eg Hamstead Subspace, Dunwich Wizard) and those with plenty of inherent low end (eg W&C Super Russian, Mountainking Magnetar/Behemoth). It just gives every one of them more heft and importantly, definition. I even bought a second Bloop so I don't have to play with the phase switch mid set. I reckon you could easily Bloop most pedals fully wet, but I generally find myself adding just a little bit of clean to the mix, to taste... it's just another EQ option

 

[Grahams Groove]

I don't own any Darkglass, but I Bloop all my dirt pedals, even those with clean blend (eg Hamstead Subspace, Dunwich Wizard) and those with plenty of inherent low end (eg W&C Super Russian, Mountainking Magnetar/Behemoth). It just gives every one of them more heft and importantly, definition. I even bought a second Bloop so I don't have to play with the phase switch mid set. I reckon you could easily Bloop most pedals fully wet, but I generally find myself adding just a little bit of clean to the mix, to taste... it's just another EQ option

Do you mean that you'll run a drive pedal in the Bloop, to add some of the Bloop's clean signal & also add some of the drive pedal's built in clean blend as well?

 

[gregmon79]

Well...now I want a loop blender for all my other dirt - even the stuff that has a clean blend.

Anyone tried the bloop with darkglass pedals that have their own blends? I'm interested in toying with running my AOU fully 'wet' and blooping it for more low end, even though the AOU's strong suit is mids/low mids.

It doesn't need it, but it's just easier to hook it up on my board the way it is, but I have the X7 running through the Bloop. It works very nicely with it. I would imagine an AO or AOU would sound glorious through a Bloop...

 

[50hertz]

Appreciate all the suggestions guys! Super helpful, I've got lots of fresh ideas to experiment with.

 

[JimboP]

Do you mean that you'll run a drive pedal in the Bloop, to add some of the Bloop's clean signal & also add some of the drive pedal's built in clean blend as well?

Exactly. I generally have the Bloop set with the mix knob around 1 o'clock, but also experiment with a drive pedal's clean blend to fine tune the balance of lows and highs. Whatever sounds good ☺

 

[Grahams Groove]

Anyone here using the Bloop within a loop-switching device or setup?

I'm considering the EQD Swiss Things to tidy up my board, have separate loops for dirt/pitch pedals and then mod/time pedals. Plus I dig the dual outputs, tuner out, boost, etc.

Anyway, Loop 1 on the Swiss Things is unbuffered and intended for drive pedals. So signal chain would likely go Loop 1 send > EQD pitchfork > Damnation Bloop (in the bloop loop I would have a rat/distortion pedal and fuzz pedal) > MBD2 > Loop 1 Return. I would have loop 1 engaged on the Swiss things most of the time, as I use the MBD2 as an almost-always-on pedal. Then the Bloop would be used to bypass or engage either the rat or fuzz with some clean lows when I need them. I can't think of any phase or ground issues that would come into play with this scenario, but I'm no expert. Any thoughts?

Tagging @father of fires on this one too...

 

[gregmon79]

Anyone here using the Bloop within a loop-switching device or setup?

I'm considering the EQD Swiss Things to tidy up my board, have separate loops for dirt/pitch pedals and then mod/time pedals. Plus I dig the dual outputs, tuner out, boost, etc.

Anyway, Loop 1 on the Swiss Things is unbuffered and intended for drive pedals. So signal chain would likely go Loop 1 send > EQD pitchfork > Damnation Bloop (in the bloop loop I would have a rat/distortion pedal and fuzz pedal) > MBD2 > Loop 1 Return. I would have loop 1 engaged on the Swiss things most of the time, as I use the MBD2 as an almost-always-on pedal. Then the Bloop would be used to bypass or engage either the rat or fuzz with some clean lows when I need them. I can't think of any phase or ground issues that would come into play with this scenario, but I'm no expert. Any thoughts?

Tagging @father of fires on this one too...

I think that would work great. I used to run the Bloop, with a few dirt pedals in it's loop, into and out of the effects loop on my HXFX. It worked really well.

 

[Matt Dean]

It doesn't need it, but it's just easier to hook it up on my board the way it is, but I have the X7 running through the Bloop. It works very nicely with it. I would imagine an AO or AOU would sound glorious through a Bloop...

I will have to try my X7 with the bloop.

 

[BklynKen]

Sorry if this is mentioned somewhere I'm not seeing, but what's the power consumption of the MBD-1? I'm upgrading my little pedal board to a slightly less little one with a power supply.

Thanks.

 

[gunai]

Sorry if this is mentioned somewhere I'm not seeing, but what's the power consumption of the MBD-1? I'm upgrading my little pedal board to a slightly less little one with a power supply.

Thanks.

Up to 36 mA according to the old manual.

 

[BklynKen]

Up to 36 mA according to the old manual.

Perfect, thanks!

 

[redstrand]

Oh my.

 

[Grahams Groove]

Oh my.View attachment 3710436

What's the story with "Gemini 12"??

 

[saidm]

MBD2 rules. One of my favorite pedal.

 

[father of fires]

Gang. The shop reno is done. Announcing a cool pedal mod this week. MBD2 parts for the next batch coming in. I've got high hopes heading into the spring. Thank you so much for the constant support!

 

[father of fires]

Sorry if this is mentioned somewhere I'm not seeing, but what's the power consumption of the MBD-1? I'm upgrading my little pedal board to a slightly less little one with a power supply.

Thanks.

It's closer to 15-20 these days.

 

[gregmon79]

Gang. The shop reno is done. Announcing a cool pedal mod this week. MBD2 parts for the next batch coming in. I've got high hopes heading into the spring. Thank you so much for the constant support!

Hell yes!!!!! Will this mod be able to be performed on the MBD1???

 

[gregmon79]

Gang. The shop reno is done. Announcing a cool pedal mod this week. MBD2 parts for the next batch coming in. I've got high hopes heading into the spring. Thank you so much for the constant support!

That's a bad a$$ board right there!