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EBS multidrive

Nicholas Smith

Nicholas Smith

Apr 10, 2019
167
40
London
#1
Hello folks.
I’ve been using the EBS Multidrive for years now. It’s ok, but doesn’t have the kind of tone I like. Sadly, I have no other comparisons...but I’m considering a new pedal if I can find one that sounds better...
Something with truly fantastic (noise - hiss free) distortion and perhaps a little gain...

Anyone have any suggestions?
 
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#7
I had the ebs, and thought it was too... Glassy? Not great.

I bought, sold, and bought again the grizzly overdrive. It's great. You may want to look into that.

The timmy is also fantastic, but hard to find and kinda expensive on the used market.
 
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#10
Xotic BB Preamp or Cusack Screamer Bass. The Xotic is capable of clean sounds with an active EQ, and goes from mild break up to almost distortion, with a little bit of compression. A very transparent pedal. The Cusack has a little bit different character, with more mids and low mids, and a thicker grain. It has a wider palette of low gain sounds and is easier on the top end. Has only a tone knob for rolling out highs, but is usable in every setting; never sounds too dark, never sounds too bright. It also has three modes of clipping diodes (silicon, LED and schottky). I have and love them both.
 
#11
Anything Tech 21. I'm familiar with the BDDI and VT platforms but would also take a close look at the PSA 2.0 and Geddy Lee & Steve Harris Sig stuff. For that fact, I would narrow my search to those with at least two programmable channels.

Riis
 
#16
There are so many options on this ball park.
My first suggestion would be the normal spark. Great eq, and not bucket loads of gain. The voicing switch give some option as well. nicely priced new, and easy to find secondhand.
aside from that, welcome to the journey that rarely ends
 
#17
Nicholas Smith said:
Sadly, lockdown is messing up doing this...☹️
Click to expand...
I appreciate that. However...your bass, Strings, playing style, effects chain and amp will cause any dirt to react in random / specific ways. One dirt pedal can be a personal "nirvana" while it's total garbage and useless to another bassist. You need to try, play and buy. There is no chair / home based research that can be made.
Every bass pickup design has a unique impedance. This impedance (not necessarily the volume) is what influences an analogue fuzz / overdrive pedal to behave in clipping ways. You can have one bass that kicks an overdrive hard into next week, where another bass hardly touches the overdrive when it's flat out. It's also very possible to turn a quite light overdrive into something very dirty / ugly at very low settings because of say a heavy wound humbucker into an active EQ circuit on the bass. The only exception to this is Digital modelling Dirt pedals. Pedals like the excellent Source Audio Aftershock, it's easy to tame a wild bass on a digital model.
If you wanted a swiss army knife Dirt box, the SA Aftershock is probably the best way to go. You'll have 6 stock patches, and you can tweak and twiddle these using the Neuro desktop to pretty much emulate any dirt pedal / style and have access to the SA community cloud patches. There are currently 50 different Distortion engine models available 100's of community made patches are available.
 
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#18
I like the EBS precisely for a low gain sound. Set the switch to STD, the drive knob to about 9:00 or 8:45 depending on how hot your bass is, how hard you play, and the volume knob for unity gain. That's a great low gain sound in my book. Don't be afraid of using low settings on drive pedals. A lot guys complain they can't get the sound they're looking for and it's because they think they have to crank everything to the right. Good luck.

Also, there are no noise free distortion pedals. It's in their nature to amplify that little bit of noise that you my not hear but is already present in your signal.
 
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#19
I have an EBS Metaldrive on my board, which my understanding is it's like the multi drive but with extra gain. I'm just using this in STD mode and it gives a great very natural sounding tube overdrive/distortion.

I would agree with GMC that trying a few to see what sounds good to your ears and using your gear is the best way, however, i know what your saying...it ain't exactly the easiest or the best time to do it right now!

If you don't want to spend a great deal but want something that's fairly versatile with some flexible eq setting i would recommend one of the Joyo pedals - particularly the American or British sounds. These are copies of some of the Tech 21 character series pedals. I have both and they both sound great on bass, with enough EQ options to make them very versatile. You can also just use them as a clean pre-amp if needed.
I also have the Joyo Ultimate drive which some like on bass but personally i don't like as much as the American or British. There's loads of Youtube videos on all 3 pedals on bass.
 
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