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Moderate OD that doesn't lose low bass?

#81
BassBrass said:
The Wounded Paw Black Sheep was before that, the first Great bass overdrive I found and it was in use for many years.
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How does it sound at low settings? The only videos I can find have it running pretty distorted, and I'm wondering if it transitions smoothly to low gain.

I love the idea of the separate drives, but can't help wondering if they're solving a problem that doesn't really exist.
 
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#83
GMC said:
??? An overdrive mimics a tube amp being overdriven...I've never heard of a tube amp that only over drives the high notes. Doesn't sound like a feature I would want in a dirt pedal. the Grizzly, blueberry and Barbershop are all great examples of really good overdrive units with minimal colouration of the bass sound. The mid range focus that you speak of is a mid boost or cut / baked in tone that messes with your basses sound and is done via EQ and not by the overdrive circuit. Generally it's not something bassists look for in an overdrive pedal. OCD and RATs do not emphasise a specific frequency band, they effect the whole bass signal and are considered fuzz pedals not overdrives.
The barbershop, OCD and Grizzly don't need a blend knob...the grit can be dialled out to zero which is the same as a clean blend. I don't know what you mean by filtered blend...I'm not sure you do either. The MXR Bass Overdrive has an EQ circuit that is blended with a knob...is that what you mean?
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Don't really know where to start with this. Clipping only above a certain frequency is common in overdrives, bassists love overdrives with EQ curves across mid frequencies, and a filtered clean blend is one in which the clean signal is filtered, e.g. the entire frequency range of the clean signal is not passed.
 
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#84
morgan138 said:
Ah yeah, that might have been badly phrased. What I meant was, I want to avoid the thing where some pedals seem to get overloaded by low frequency content which makes low notes sound ragged or fart-y. Which can be cool in some contexts, it's just not what I'm looking for here.


For sure, and I'm definitely trying to keep that in mind along with the fact that I probably need a bit more midrange/less bass in a band mix than I like to hear playing on my own.

Did some testing at the practice, trying to get a handle on the low end thing. What I found was that with the Demon and especially the Drivemaster, I lost a noticeable band of low bass no matter how I set the pedal -- like there was an invisible "deep bass" knob on both pedals that was zeroed. It wasn't catastrophic, and the Demon especially sounded pretty decent if I didn't compare it to the clean signal.

But the weird thing was that I couldn't EQ that low end back in. I had the 40 and 100 sliders fairly high up and it still lacked low bass compared to [no pedal + no EQ]. I'm not a pedal builder, but it felt like there was some low frequency cut off point where the pedal had just stopped processing sound, so there was nothing there to boost back in afterwards. Does that even make sense?
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Gotcha. Carry on then! And avoid the Barbershop
 
#87
morgan138 said:
I love Voivod, but I've never liked a Rat or Rat-like pedal on bass. So I'm instinctively skeptical of the Blower Box (and also Volt Thrower), right or wrong. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I own a Blower Box and love it, but I wouldn't recommend it for your purpose. It's more for heavier, more hairy kind of OD and distortion, and the sound you've described wanting isn't that.
 
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#88
morgan138 said:
How does it sound at low settings? The only videos I can find have it running pretty distorted, and I'm wondering if it transitions smoothly to low gain.

I love the idea of the separate drives, but can't help wondering if they're solving a problem that doesn't really exist.
Click to expand...
I think it specializes in the low settings. I like the sound it makes with the low band all the way up and the mid and treble low, at 9:30 or so, almost full blend (which lets through just some clean), and I had to play aggressively for the drive to manifest. Turn the blend down to get more dirt.
 
#93
morgan138 said:
Yeah! Can you recommend any that don't lose low bass?
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For my self, my personal preference is to use a blend with any drive, especially overdrives, because they are so mid range specific that a little low end loss is almost guaranteed.
The Fuzzrocious Demon uses a simple tone control and does a pretty good job of keeping your lows. Although they are a little boutique-ish, they can be found all over the internet and used here in the classifieds.
I've heard a lot of good things about the Big Game Bedlam, and the price is good. I'm not sure about availability or delivery times.
Abominable Electronics introduced their Oppressive Cult Destroyer pedal recently that has a bass boost switch. I haven't heard it yet, but it has great potential.
My current weapon of choice also happens to be the hardest to get. Dunwich Amps makes an Olde Dirty Bass pedal that is an OCD with a 3 band EQ, clipping options, and a shelf adjustment. Unfortunately DA only has the manpower to do small batch releases that tend to sell out within hours of being announced.
 
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#95
socialleper said:
The Fuzzrocious Demon uses a simple tone control and does a pretty good job of keeping your lows.
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taylor16 said:
Fuzzrocious Demon King. Thing is the bomb.
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A (non-King) Demon is actually what I'm using now. It definitely sucks out a chunk of low bass, maybe it's less noticeable on some instruments though? On my Rickenbacker, it kind of makes [both pickups together] sound like [bridge pickup only] if that makes sense. The neck pickup's deep throb vanishes.

Aside from that, it's a cool pedal. If I was the pedal modding type and/or wanted to get into a separate blend loop it might work, but...
 
#97
I love my Darkglass B3k for modern sounding OD. It replaced a custom built Klon clone that was tuned for bass. They make the Vintage Microtubes that is a more, dare I say, vintage sounding OD. The blend knob lets me dial in more of my clean signal for low end. But I have been very impressed with all of Darkglass' material.
EDIT: Saw the earlier posts on the B3k. It is indeed very modern sounding, so I would recommend the microtubes for vintage OD. I concur that Darkglass pedals do what they do very well but if the sound isn't for you then certainly buy another pedal.
 
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