I am looking for input for a pedal that will thicken and add a nice bit of grit to my tone. Don't really need any full blown distortion or fuzz. I guess maybe more along the lines of a clean boost. I have tried the TC Spark, several EHX and Darkglass pedals, but did not care for them. The three I have narrowed down to are:
Blumes
Big Booty Judy
Pork & Pickle
I would love to hear feedback on these from anyone who has used any or all of them. I have heard great things, but also downsides for all of these so making a decision is hard.
Let me give you a few cons:
Blumes: Essentially a bass friendly tube screamer. It's nothing to frown upon, but also nothing special. It's the pedal you get when you just want a bit of grit and don't want to overthink it or drive yourself into financial ruin, because mediocrity suits you just fine.
Big Booty Judy: That's a RAT-based pedal. I personally find it quite the challenge to get a slightly thicker low gain sound out of a hard clipping distortion circuit. It's like having a pack of rabid dogs, whipped in a frenzy on the other side of a door and then opening that door, but just a crack. You're not letting the dogs out, but you're not keeping them in all the way, either.
Pork & Pickle: The Pork Loin is not enough - it sounds super easy on the ear and is one of the softest clipping units I ever came across. That sounds fine at home, but simply disappears completely in a mix. The Swollen Pickle is too much. It's a fuzz, and even though this is also on the milder side of things, it's like being dismembered by a mild chainsaw. When you're looking for a low gain sound, that is.
If you like the Way Huge pedal format and don't mind tube screamers, the Way Huge Green Rhino is great on bass.
Want some more ideas? Well, here are some:
Low price segment: The Nobels ODR-1, or Mini. These can go for less than 50 Eurodollars. The Nobels is described as the "Other green pedal" - besides the Tube Screamer - but it does the opposite of the TS. Instead of squeezing your sound towards the mids, it opens up and has a great bass and treble response. Nobels even made a bass version for a time, but it's not needed, the normal ones are just fine. You get a great, open and transparent low gain drive sound with good dynamics.
A bit more expensive: Xotic BB Bass Preamp. They were discontinued for a while, but now that they are back in production, second hand units sell below 150. It is a low gain drive with a two band EQ. It's simple, but it's great. I've literally tested over a hundred drive pedals, from cheap to super expensive, and this one is on one of my boards.
Still a bit more: Fairfield Barbershop. This one is very transparent and it's great when you want to add just a bit of grit so your sound gets a little more ballsy. Retail for these is around 250, but used ones rarely drop below 180.
For twenty currency units more than a barbershop, there is the Origin DCX Bass Preamp. It has two settings, Preamp and Overdrive. The latter creates a mean sound that is super dense and sits great even in a tight mix. The former is quite luxurious and extremely dynamic. Their EQ points are more to enhance your signal instead of shaping it. It's a great pedal to drop in to a signal chain that works fine, to make it work great. This is what the Pork&Pickle should have been, if you ask me.
Now if money is not so much of a concern, you could also look for a BJFe Blueberry. The original one, not any of the copies. That sound is awesome, and you have that weird knob that decides how much bass is fed into the clipping stage - which really lets you dial in your low gain tone.
And since we're firmly in boutique territory now, I want to mention the Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees. Audio Kitchen does boutique tube products. Preamps, mini amps, full amps - everything driven by tubes. The only non-tube product is the FPT. It is an imitation of a tube amp in a box. And they really took that amp-in-a-box thing way too literal. The circuit has a tiny little power stage that feeds into a tiny little power soak - it is, technically speaking, an amp in a box. And it sounds awesome. The two band EQ is really meant for shaping the drive sound, where the lows give you the heft and the highs give your the sizzle. It is surprisingly versatile, too and stacks extremely well with other gain pedals, both feeding into them and being fed.
And one step up from a pedal that imitates a tube circuit would be a circuit that runs on tubes. Namely, since the air is getting thin price-wise - the aforementioned Audio Kitchen Pedal is 345 GBP, which is a lot for a drive pedal - the Effectrode Tube Drive, which is 379GPB. This one is not joking around and runs on three tubes. One of them does the EQ, while the other two provide four gain stages for the drive. It's incredibly well mannered when you let it rip, but also the low gain sounds are hard to top by anything out there.
And one more oddball as a pedal that works super well and flies far under any radar: The Bogner Wessex v1. It's transformer based and the transformer was designed by Rupert Neve. It works incredibly well on bass. The Bass knob works a bit like the 'Nature' knob on the Blueberry. The lowest lows are bypassing the clipping section and the bass knob decides the frequency of the bypass. Turn it into one direction and your entire low end stays clear, turn it in the other and your low end gets distorted, and then go and find the sweet spot for your personal sound. It's really a great pedal and the used price for these is often really a joke for what you get, both in terms of sound and build quality.
