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Genzler 4 on the Floor
- Thread starter DrThumpenstein
- Start date
To each his own. I'm using mostly cleaner settings for the added harmonics/fatness, especially with my gentler-toned basses.
Totally. I didn't think I implied anything else.
No argument intended. I also use very clean amps/cabs, so I can benefit from the extra tone shaping.
Got the 4OTF. Awesome pedal with a huge bandwith of tones from clean to overdriven. Not going to repeat all the eloquent prior posts.
But you better have a fairly clear idea of what you want your tone to sound like or you'll be twisting kobs forever.
However, so far, not a bad tone to be found, just a huge range of flavours.
One interesting application ist use it as the use as clean(ish) HPF just on the Drive Vol, cleans the bottom end up quite nicely.
Wonder what the slope of that HPF is @agedhorse .
But you better have a fairly clear idea of what you want your tone to sound like or you'll be twisting kobs forever.
However, so far, not a bad tone to be found, just a huge range of flavours.
One interesting application ist use it as the use as clean(ish) HPF just on the Drive Vol, cleans the bottom end up quite nicely.
Wonder what the slope of that HPF is @agedhorse .
- Feb 12, 2006
- 61,024
- 5
- 220,888
- Disclosures
- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
Finally got to try one of these today, and it came home with me. I didn’t *need* another drive pedal, but it sounded so damn good I had to buy it.
I've been playing around with the 4OTF for the last 10 days.
My initial enthusiasm dissipated fairly quickly because I felt there was always something muffled to the tone, especially on higher drive settings, frustrating me to the point of wanting to return it. Maybe I just prefer the the clarity of the Aguilar Agro, which led me to do a little comparison to find out where the difference comes from.
I love the clarity and tone of the Agro, but hate that it is audibly hissy when cranked even a bit - the Genzler 4TFL has absolutely no detectable (by ear) noise or hiss, excellent.
The Agro has a Contour control centering at 900Hz and a baked in, drive (Saturation) dependent freqency curve up to 4k after which it sharply drops. The Presence control will raise the curve fairly linear (no bell shape) starting from 200 Hz (no gain) over a range of -6/+9dB at the 4k point. The Saturation control also acts like a tilt EQ pivoting at 400 Hz with the bottom end attenuated at lower Saturation levels and the high mids raised and vice versa at higher levels. So the whole system of Saturation tilt EQ, Contour and Presence is quite interactive.
Whereas the Genzler 4ONTF ist ruler flat with absolutely no built-in tone curve and has of course no other tone shaping capability than applying the HPF and LPF to the Drive volume and making partially up for that by adding Clean volume thereby creating a raised pass band which however still remains essentially ruler flat.
The type of distortion is different between the Agro and the 4ONTF, the one cannot really copy the tone of the other, even though the 4ONTF can get somewhat close up to mid Saturation overdrive distortion of the Agro. Mind, the 4ONTF can get pretty distorted, but in a less agrressive way than the Agro.
On the Agro the waveform is even at fully CCW never a clean sine wave and starts morphing pretty early into a saw tooth shape and gets pretty jagged on full tilt, whereas the 4ONTF compresses into symetrical / asysmetrical variations of square waves depending on Gear.
Of course harmonic content generationed when increasing Drive/Saturation varies as well between Agro and 4ONTF, which also shows significant differences between the Gears.
In comes my trusty Carl Martin Para EQ pedal, which has been my tone shaper / problem solver for the last 15 years.
At the moment, this is my last pedal before the amp, so the 4ONTF feeds into EQ. The EQ Gain (+/-15db) is varying the Q of the bell.
A slight reduction of 3-4dB at 900Hz on the mid band and a slight raise of 3-4dB at 4k on the high band makes a significant difference to the clarity of the tone.
This clarity and increased bite is most significant in getting through in a mix, which in my case is playing along to pre-recorded music or playalong tracks.
In conclusion, I would consider some form of EQ unit a must have for the 4OTF, wether it's Genzler's newly released matching RE-Q with fixed bell centers at 90/250/630/1300/2600 or something different is probably a matter of personal taste. The baked in curve of the Agro would probably be quite difficult to approximate on the RE-Q, but tastes are different.
Edit: Let me add that the amp EQ is no solution to the dilemma, as you want the altered EQ only when the 4ONTF is engaged for instance by putting both units in a loop of a switcher to engage / bypass.
My initial enthusiasm dissipated fairly quickly because I felt there was always something muffled to the tone, especially on higher drive settings, frustrating me to the point of wanting to return it. Maybe I just prefer the the clarity of the Aguilar Agro, which led me to do a little comparison to find out where the difference comes from.
I love the clarity and tone of the Agro, but hate that it is audibly hissy when cranked even a bit - the Genzler 4TFL has absolutely no detectable (by ear) noise or hiss, excellent.
The Agro has a Contour control centering at 900Hz and a baked in, drive (Saturation) dependent freqency curve up to 4k after which it sharply drops. The Presence control will raise the curve fairly linear (no bell shape) starting from 200 Hz (no gain) over a range of -6/+9dB at the 4k point. The Saturation control also acts like a tilt EQ pivoting at 400 Hz with the bottom end attenuated at lower Saturation levels and the high mids raised and vice versa at higher levels. So the whole system of Saturation tilt EQ, Contour and Presence is quite interactive.
Whereas the Genzler 4ONTF ist ruler flat with absolutely no built-in tone curve and has of course no other tone shaping capability than applying the HPF and LPF to the Drive volume and making partially up for that by adding Clean volume thereby creating a raised pass band which however still remains essentially ruler flat.
The type of distortion is different between the Agro and the 4ONTF, the one cannot really copy the tone of the other, even though the 4ONTF can get somewhat close up to mid Saturation overdrive distortion of the Agro. Mind, the 4ONTF can get pretty distorted, but in a less agrressive way than the Agro.
On the Agro the waveform is even at fully CCW never a clean sine wave and starts morphing pretty early into a saw tooth shape and gets pretty jagged on full tilt, whereas the 4ONTF compresses into symetrical / asysmetrical variations of square waves depending on Gear.
Of course harmonic content generationed when increasing Drive/Saturation varies as well between Agro and 4ONTF, which also shows significant differences between the Gears.
In comes my trusty Carl Martin Para EQ pedal, which has been my tone shaper / problem solver for the last 15 years.
At the moment, this is my last pedal before the amp, so the 4ONTF feeds into EQ. The EQ Gain (+/-15db) is varying the Q of the bell.
A slight reduction of 3-4dB at 900Hz on the mid band and a slight raise of 3-4dB at 4k on the high band makes a significant difference to the clarity of the tone.
This clarity and increased bite is most significant in getting through in a mix, which in my case is playing along to pre-recorded music or playalong tracks.
In conclusion, I would consider some form of EQ unit a must have for the 4OTF, wether it's Genzler's newly released matching RE-Q with fixed bell centers at 90/250/630/1300/2600 or something different is probably a matter of personal taste. The baked in curve of the Agro would probably be quite difficult to approximate on the RE-Q, but tastes are different.
Edit: Let me add that the amp EQ is no solution to the dilemma, as you want the altered EQ only when the 4ONTF is engaged for instance by putting both units in a loop of a switcher to engage / bypass.
Last edited:
I've been using the 4otf for a while now, putting it through it's paces at home and at band practice (70s-90s covers), and have come to the conclusion that it fits my practical real-world needs better than anything else I have tried.
Those needs are similar to many... a tubish always-on, responsive, light overdrive to become part of my core tone without destroying anything about it. Also, like many, I have tried many pedals to get there. Each pedal I have tried has usually fallen short, for my needs, in some or all of these areas:
1) Other pedals I've tried have tended to change my core tone to be more harsh/less good than it was before processing, even when set clean. I love my core tone, and it almost doesn't need any grit, to the point where I would rather play clean than destroy any of the core tone's goodness. I just want a tiny bit of grind blended-in that responds to dynamics. Most pedals fail for me right out the gate because of they immediately harm the core tone, even when set clean.
2) Other pedals I've tried have thinned-out the low end too much. Even some pedals with crossovers or other low-pass options seem to suck out some of the low frequencies I want to keep. Some let you add it back in, with a low eq, but that's different to my ears, and more artificial and muddy sounding (imo) than just allowing the nice lows that were already there to come through.
3) Other pedals I've tried that have clean blends can sound very "separated" between the clean and distorted tone. Like there is a normal clean bass, and then there is a thin distorted, almost out-of-phase tone "floating over it". Almost like a buzz or other undesirable artifact.
So for me, the Genzler pedal just hits on all cylinders. I can start with my clean tone, and "fade-in" just the right amount of grind. It's pretty easy to find the sweet spot where it's mostly clean, with just a little hair, and a little more grit when you dig in. All knobs at noon actually sounds great as a starting point.
Another thing is just the "quality" of the distorted tones. This is hard to describe, but each of the gears sounds pleasant, devoid of nasty artifacts, and responsive to dynamics. There isn't a harsh tone in the box. Also each gear is noticeably different, and they're all usable.
The last thing I'll say is that the whole item just screams quality. The box, the jacks, the design, the tones, the graphics. It looks feels and sounds like a premium thing.
Negatives? Well I taped-over the "bypass" light. "Light on" means pedal on to my caveman brain. So to avoid confusion, i blacked it out with some electrical tape.
All in all I love it and would recommend giving it a shot if you are thinking about it.
For reference, I'm using a short scale bass with passive J pickups (aguilar AG 4J-60's) and have experimented with this pedal into a few different solid-state rigs (trace, genzbenz and tc) and a few low-wattage tube amps (traynor yba 100 and ampeg pf20t). Sounds great through all. Not sure how it sound with active pickups as I don't own a bass with those in it.
Those needs are similar to many... a tubish always-on, responsive, light overdrive to become part of my core tone without destroying anything about it. Also, like many, I have tried many pedals to get there. Each pedal I have tried has usually fallen short, for my needs, in some or all of these areas:
1) Other pedals I've tried have tended to change my core tone to be more harsh/less good than it was before processing, even when set clean. I love my core tone, and it almost doesn't need any grit, to the point where I would rather play clean than destroy any of the core tone's goodness. I just want a tiny bit of grind blended-in that responds to dynamics. Most pedals fail for me right out the gate because of they immediately harm the core tone, even when set clean.
2) Other pedals I've tried have thinned-out the low end too much. Even some pedals with crossovers or other low-pass options seem to suck out some of the low frequencies I want to keep. Some let you add it back in, with a low eq, but that's different to my ears, and more artificial and muddy sounding (imo) than just allowing the nice lows that were already there to come through.
3) Other pedals I've tried that have clean blends can sound very "separated" between the clean and distorted tone. Like there is a normal clean bass, and then there is a thin distorted, almost out-of-phase tone "floating over it". Almost like a buzz or other undesirable artifact.
So for me, the Genzler pedal just hits on all cylinders. I can start with my clean tone, and "fade-in" just the right amount of grind. It's pretty easy to find the sweet spot where it's mostly clean, with just a little hair, and a little more grit when you dig in. All knobs at noon actually sounds great as a starting point.
Another thing is just the "quality" of the distorted tones. This is hard to describe, but each of the gears sounds pleasant, devoid of nasty artifacts, and responsive to dynamics. There isn't a harsh tone in the box. Also each gear is noticeably different, and they're all usable.
The last thing I'll say is that the whole item just screams quality. The box, the jacks, the design, the tones, the graphics. It looks feels and sounds like a premium thing.
Negatives? Well I taped-over the "bypass" light. "Light on" means pedal on to my caveman brain. So to avoid confusion, i blacked it out with some electrical tape.
All in all I love it and would recommend giving it a shot if you are thinking about it.
For reference, I'm using a short scale bass with passive J pickups (aguilar AG 4J-60's) and have experimented with this pedal into a few different solid-state rigs (trace, genzbenz and tc) and a few low-wattage tube amps (traynor yba 100 and ampeg pf20t). Sounds great through all. Not sure how it sound with active pickups as I don't own a bass with those in it.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,636
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
i just bought one based on your post since i also love my pure unaffected tone.
cool! curious to hear how you like it once you get it
You really just nailed everything about why a lot of overdrive pedals have left me wanting over the years. Most turn the low-end into farty mush and toss a blanket over the top-end. And Blend and Tone knobs just don't correct those things enough to my satisfaction. The Genzler doesn't have any of those problems. I dig mine more and more at every gig.
For those other pedals, I've started using a blender pedal and have been much more satisfied with how they perform in a mix. The Genzler doesn't need that though (and a blend pedal may actually work against it).
I'm curious about the clock pedal on your board, though.
ah, the clockYou really just nailed everything about why a lot of overdrive pedals have left me wanting over the years. Most turn the low-end into farty mush and toss a blanket over the top-end. And Blend and Tone knobs just don't correct those things enough to my satisfaction. The Genzler doesn't have any of those problems. I dig mine more and more at every gig.
For those other pedals, I've started using a blender pedal and have been much more satisfied with how they perform in a mix. The Genzler doesn't need that though (and a blend pedal may actually work against it).
I'm curious about the clock pedal on your board, though.
its a ds engineering chronograph, with time, countdown and stopwatch modes. Pretty handy!Sounds like a great idea, using a blender. That would make some cool pedals usable.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,636
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
it arrived today. my first impression is that it's a very nice sounding drive pedal and is definitely transparent (i.e no baked in tone which i like a lot), however so far i'm not all that fond of the clipping tone on my low e string on any of the 4 clipping stages. that's the only thing that i find somewhat unnatural sounding in it. you probably wouldn't notice it in a mix so i'll need to experiment more.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,636
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
a Fender Telecaster bass thru a Fender Showman. I'm also using flatwounds which, IMO are harder to get a good natural sounding gritty tone with.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,636
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
the more that i work with the 4 on the floor, the more i like it, especially running my chase tone secret preamp in front of it. it just seems to smooth everything out even more and make it sound even more natural.
The High and low pass filters, do they effect the clean sound as well as the distorted? Also, if you were to run this with no distortion, could it essentially replace a Broughton HPF/LPF?
