We all know transparent low-gain overdrive is a bass player's lifelong quest until fulfilled. Nay, even beyond fulfillment the quest may continue. One person's SSBS Mini is another person's EHX Soul Food, and your Fairfiled Barbershop just may be another person's SolidGoldFX Beta. To this venerable topic, I am adding the Keeley Super Phat Mod.
The clips below are using my Lakland Skyline Decade (mega single coils with rounds), but I also tried the pedal with a j bass with flats and it sounded lovely: creamy, round and boomy, yet maintaining definition. The file names also show what settings I used. Each clip has clean groove, followed by groove + pedal.
To my ears, the Keeley Super Phat Mod is an absolute must for bass players looking for a transparent low-gain overdrive. I know a lot of folks say there's no such as transparent, since OD will typically color your tone with EQ. I have to say that this pedal did not do that at all. As the drive is cranked, so is the volume, acting as a sort of dirty boost which is to be expected. This can be tamed by the Level knob--and this is the kicker--the volume and tone knobs on your axe. Your bass's controls and pickups will definitely change the character of the OD. (I don't have a p style bass, nor active instruments, so I can't say how it would sound with those.) In low-gain settings, digging in hard will produce a noticeable breakup. I tried to show this in clips below where I hit the 1 hard in each bar.
I also loved how this played with other pedals. The second groove in the third clip shows the Super Phat Mod stacked with the Zvex Mastotron fuzz. When stacked, the fuzz acquires harmonic definition it did not have before, in addition to refined clarity and sustain. I also stacked it with an octave, envelope filter, and phaser in separate tests, and they all benefited from it. It just makes everything else sound better.
The Super Phat Mod is Keeley's perfected version of his famous Boss BD-2 mod. This retains the mode switch (Flat and Phat), which is crucial for bassplayers since it serves as a two-mode bass-only EQ, and updates the FETs used.
Fwiw, I've played the Soul Food (meh), and really love the Way Huge Pork Loin (not JohnK modded) though it does interact strangely with my preamp and compressor depending on where in the chain I put it. I haven't played the Barbershop, Fifth Gear, Mini, nor other highly touted ODs. Strangely, I've found the EBS FuzzMo to be an excellent low-gain OD, in addition to running the dirt gamut to fuzz as well--a very underrated and cheap pedal! (That's something for another thread!)
Clips below show Flat Mode; Phat Mode; and my favorite setting, while sprinkling in a little Gratitude in the fuzz+OD sample. Gratitude clip has the Mastotron first, then Phat Mod into Mastotron.
Hope this helps folks in their low-gain journeys. Let me know what you think of the clips!
The clips below are using my Lakland Skyline Decade (mega single coils with rounds), but I also tried the pedal with a j bass with flats and it sounded lovely: creamy, round and boomy, yet maintaining definition. The file names also show what settings I used. Each clip has clean groove, followed by groove + pedal.
To my ears, the Keeley Super Phat Mod is an absolute must for bass players looking for a transparent low-gain overdrive. I know a lot of folks say there's no such as transparent, since OD will typically color your tone with EQ. I have to say that this pedal did not do that at all. As the drive is cranked, so is the volume, acting as a sort of dirty boost which is to be expected. This can be tamed by the Level knob--and this is the kicker--the volume and tone knobs on your axe. Your bass's controls and pickups will definitely change the character of the OD. (I don't have a p style bass, nor active instruments, so I can't say how it would sound with those.) In low-gain settings, digging in hard will produce a noticeable breakup. I tried to show this in clips below where I hit the 1 hard in each bar.
I also loved how this played with other pedals. The second groove in the third clip shows the Super Phat Mod stacked with the Zvex Mastotron fuzz. When stacked, the fuzz acquires harmonic definition it did not have before, in addition to refined clarity and sustain. I also stacked it with an octave, envelope filter, and phaser in separate tests, and they all benefited from it. It just makes everything else sound better.
The Super Phat Mod is Keeley's perfected version of his famous Boss BD-2 mod. This retains the mode switch (Flat and Phat), which is crucial for bassplayers since it serves as a two-mode bass-only EQ, and updates the FETs used.
Fwiw, I've played the Soul Food (meh), and really love the Way Huge Pork Loin (not JohnK modded) though it does interact strangely with my preamp and compressor depending on where in the chain I put it. I haven't played the Barbershop, Fifth Gear, Mini, nor other highly touted ODs. Strangely, I've found the EBS FuzzMo to be an excellent low-gain OD, in addition to running the dirt gamut to fuzz as well--a very underrated and cheap pedal! (That's something for another thread!)
Clips below show Flat Mode; Phat Mode; and my favorite setting, while sprinkling in a little Gratitude in the fuzz+OD sample. Gratitude clip has the Mastotron first, then Phat Mod into Mastotron.
Hope this helps folks in their low-gain journeys. Let me know what you think of the clips!
