Mr. Black Thunderclaw Sound Clips?

[Obese Chess]

Hello!

I was recently talking with Jack Deville of Mr. Black pedals here in Portland about not being entirely satisfied with my distortion on my pedalboard (My Darkglass B7K introduces a lot of noise into the equation no matter what I do and I'm starting to find its distortion a bit "fizzy" at lower volumes) - he recommended either stacking or replacing it with his Thunderclaw pedal, which has a clean tone under ~35Hz but distorts above it. Trouble is, I can only find one sound clip of it being used on a bass, and it's on his website and is about 30 seconds long. Cursory searching suggests there's a number of fans of his pedals here, was wondering if maybe anyone had some sound clips or demos of it being used on a bass.

Thank you!

 

[sunbeast]

Are you sure you got that HPF frequency right? 35Hz is below the fundamental of the low E string, so its really not going to be adding much if anything. Many drive distortion circuits have a high-pass filter somewhere quite a bit higher than that because hitting a clipping circuit with a lot of bass tends to create a mushy tone. The "Grunt" switch on your B7K is basically just changing how much bass is sent to the clipping circuit.

I haven't tried the Thunderclaw, but I appreciate that he used a Jesus Lizard bass riff to demo it and it sounds pretty good in that context (when I used to live in Portland I always demoed his creations at Olde Town Music, I wish there were a similar spot in LA!). There are a quite a few bass drive pedals in that general universe though (for one, the Rusty Box is a clone of the actual preamp used to record that very bassline in the studio).

The B7K has alot of high-frequency response on tap (particularly with the Attack boosted), but also can be somewhat sensitive to power supplies and sometimes to being daisy-chained (I didn't find mine particularly noisy without cranking Gain and/or Attack/highs). What are you using to power it out of curiosity? I also agree that its distortion can be a bit fizzy depending on how you shape it and what you are playing it into, but in a band mix it can work quite well. I no longer have one and its not my favorite DG flavor by any means, but can be quite versatile by utilizing all the blend/shape/EQ options. It may well be that it doesn't do the thing you are looking for, but best to make sure before ditching something you already have!

 

[Obese Chess]

Are you sure you got that HPF frequency right? 35Hz is below the fundamental of the low E string, so its really not going to be adding much if anything. Many drive distortion circuits have a high-pass filter somewhere quite a bit higher than that because hitting a clipping circuit with a lot of bass tends to create a mushy tone. The "Grunt" switch on your B7K is basically just changing how much bass is sent to the clipping circuit.

I haven't tried the Thunderclaw, but I appreciate that he used a Jesus Lizard bass riff to demo it and it sounds pretty good in that context (when I used to live in Portland I always demoed his creations at Olde Town Music, I wish there were a similar spot in LA!). There are a quite a few bass drive pedals in that general universe though (for one, the Rusty Box is a clone of the actual preamp used to record that very bassline in the studio).

The B7K has alot of high-frequency response on tap (particularly with the Attack boosted), but also can be somewhat sensitive to power supplies and sometimes to being daisy-chained (I didn't find mine particularly noisy without cranking Gain and/or Attack/highs). What are you using to power it out of curiosity? I also agree that its distortion can be a bit fizzy depending on how you shape it and what you are playing it into, but in a band mix it can work quite well. I no longer have one and its not my favorite DG flavor by any means, but can be quite versatile by utilizing all the blend/shape/EQ options. It may well be that it doesn't do the thing you are looking for, but best to make sure before ditching something you already have!

It's 160Hz. No idea where I got 35. And I'm not planning to ditch the Darkglass per se as I love its tone in some contexts, it just doesn't give me what I want when I really push it and I'd like to stack it with something a bit off the beaten path in the quest for having my own tone.

 

[sunbeast]

It's 160Hz. No idea where I got 35. And I'm not planning to ditch the Darkglass per se as I love its tone in some contexts, it just doesn't give me what I want when I really push it and I'd like to stack it with something a bit off the beaten path in the quest for having my own tone.

160hz definitely makes more sense, and is a good point for an hpf into a gain stage to keep the tone punchy. Curious how much of the clean signal you are getting below it though without any sort of blend control. Maybe the Bass control works on the dry signal. Id be curious
There are a number of people running the B7K at the end of the chain with low-Gain as more of a shaper. I liked it better in that context than as a stand-alone heavy drive as well- it can do cool things to other (especially chunkier) gain pedals that you send into it.

 

[Obese Chess]

160hz definitely makes more sense, and is a good point for an hpf into a gain stage to keep the tone punchy. Curious how much of the clean signal you are getting below it though without any sort of blend control. Maybe the Bass control works on the dry signal. Id be curious
There are a number of people running the B7K at the end of the chain with low-Gain as more of a shaper. I liked it better in that context than as a stand-alone heavy drive as well- it can do cool things to other (especially chunkier) gain pedals that you send into it.

As a bit of a pedal newbie: why not the other way around, putting the B7K before the gain/OD/etc pedal?

 

[sunbeast]

As a bit of a pedal newbie: why not the other way around, putting the B7K before the gain/OD/etc pedal?

Try it both ways for sure! I just generally treat pedals like that more like preamps at the end of the chain, especially with all the EQ and Blend to work with (and the DI output). The Blend in particular will give the pedal a bit more "headroom" to work with vs most straight drive pedals. When I had a B7K I also just found it to work best at the end for my taste.