Okay - just took the Maxon Hybrid Bass Driver home and put it through its paces. First impression was, “wow, this thing sounds pretty dang good, it holds the bass frequencies well…”
Second impression, “hmmm… there’s no master volume, there is clean level and drive level… but no summed volume.”
So, regardless of what I think of it, I must either set it at soundcheck and not touch it (which can be fine), or get the level of distortion/drive that I want, and use something downstream to bring the volume back down.
Unity on the clean level knob seems to be around 1:00, and on the driven level as well, provided the Drive control (separate from the drive level control) is not above noon or so. That “primal growl” (my term) at the attack of a note is achievable, but the output level of the pedal is so much higher than the signal before the pedal is engaged that I’m not sure how to manage it without reducing the volume downstream. There’s the bad stuff.
THE GOOD STUFF: If you are willing to use this as a single sound pedal, meaning you don’t vary the settings widely during your set, then you have a controllable 808 circuit with a treble drive control, a bass drive control, AND a clean blend. I did not find that the character of the distortion changed that much with varied settings on the bass and treble controls, but that is a strength for this pedal. Did the pedal ever really shine? Yes.
When I used this pedal to drive an octave pedal (a Boss OC-5 in polyphonic mode) it really turned the Boss from what I expected to be a synthy sort of thing into a doomy, angry symphonic sort of thing. When I added a chorus after the octave - a little EHX Bass Clone - it became positively EPIC. And it’s to do with the controllable, even-handed output from the Maxon, even at near-pegged drive levels.
For me, alone, the Maxon is too fuzzy to be a good low-gain drive. At highest, extreme settings it surpasses fuzz and goes buzzy. But for a soft clipping 808, at all points in between, it is an imminently controllable, well behaved, overdrive distortion unit that should be considered upstream of octaving and modulating pedals. I have an MBD v3 coming to try out for my pedalboard next.
