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My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal
- Thread starter el murdoque
- Start date
How about Harley Benson preamp.
(this was a joke by the way, in case of doubt, the cheap Harley Benton bass preamp is not actually capable of adding any drive, despite having a pre-gain control knob).
A few I'm curious about are the new Fender Bassman Drive (and it is pretty inexpensive), Laney Blackheath, and the Vivie Rhinotes (or even Rhinotes Red Zone. The Vivie looks pretty hard to find. Maybe over on the other side of the ocean they may be around a bit more. Maybe. They are on eBay here but the prices are higher than giraffe *****
On the Catalinbread front, a Dirty Little Secret could be very cool as well. I had one for guitar before selling it 10+ years ago. Never had a chance to test it on bass before selling. It's a Marshall-in-a-box, with an internal dip switch to go from a Super Lead circuit to a Super Bass circuit. I know @el murdoque has experienced a Bluesbreaker type box before, but I don't know how much those and the Super Bass circuits have in common.
- Feb 16, 2008
- 21,240
- 23,638
- Disclosures
- John K Custom Basses
i bought the new Fender Bassman Driver and i like it quite a bit. i'd like to hear el murdoque's take on it.
The original Marshall Bluesbreaker that all the various boutiques are based off of was supposed to emulate Eric Clapton's tone from one of the earlier albums he played on. The Catalinbread pedals are emulations of the entire preamp sections of various older amps using jfets to emulate tubes. So the circuitry is quite different and the tones should be fairly different too, but that is not a guarantee.
I was offered a Marshall Bluesbreaker II pedal in exchange for the Bass Soul Food. My first impulse was to agree, just to have the BSF out of the house.
But then I remembered the Prince of Tone is based on that circuit and I think I made it abundantly clear how much I enjoyed playing that one ?
By reputation the BBII is worse than the original, and the PoT is an improvement. I would guess you made the right call.
Both the Genzler and the Fender have a simple problem: They are not only extremely boring looking, they both are actually butt-ugly.
Nonetheless, I added them to my list. No current offers on the second hand market that I can spot, though.
Nonetheless, I added them to my list. No current offers on the second hand market that I can spot, though.
I have the Genzler Magellan Pre/DI, which shares the form and palette of the drive and EQ pedals. While they’re no eye-candy, to be sure, there’s a lot of functionality across the series. If you were going to have a look at a Genzler, it may be that you’d prefer the Crash Box over the 4 On the Floor. IIRC, @johnk_10 prefers the former.
@el murdoque I did a little more digging, and the Super Bass and Bluesbreaker circuits are indeed not the same. Also, maybe I've incorrectly remembered things, but I could have sworn you enjoyed the Xotic BB that you had? And unless I'm way off base, that's also a Bluesbreaker circuit.
Given how long this bender has been going, I'm trying to come up with "known" circuits/brands etc that haven't had extensive representation in here yet. I reckon that Marshall-style circuits haven't been given enough time to shine, and it seems the Super Bass would be the natural place to end up.
So I won't give up on this Dirty Little Secret shout-out. Last time I looked for one on the used market, just for fun, it was only $175 Canada Bucks, which is little more than Monopoly money based on our economic outlook these days.
Given how long this bender has been going, I'm trying to come up with "known" circuits/brands etc that haven't had extensive representation in here yet. I reckon that Marshall-style circuits haven't been given enough time to shine, and it seems the Super Bass would be the natural place to end up.
So I won't give up on this Dirty Little Secret shout-out. Last time I looked for one on the used market, just for fun, it was only $175 Canada Bucks, which is little more than Monopoly money based on our economic outlook these days.
I only went on the BB spree for a second, with the acquisition of the Wampler Pantheon, which I liked.
The Xotic is ... I can't really tell. It does not really feel like a TS, neither does it feel like a Blues Breaker - if it was based on one of these circuits, then it was heavily modified.
I found a Dirty Little Secret Mk III (five knobs) and an OG one in pink (three knobs one switch).
Have you ever tried a Blues Driver pedal? I'm aware that you do not like Boss pedals, and I have only a cheap TC Cinders BD clone, but I do think these circuits can work for bass, too. Of course I'm no pedal cork sniffer at all and play bass almost exclusively clean, so what do I know...
I always discounted these because of the lost low end.
This thread seems to confirm that:
I think the Sushibox JC Emerald is also based on the Marshall Super Bass.
I need to bore all y'all with something I did yesterday.
I started off by re-shuffling the pedals on the ugly board. Forgot to take a pic, though.
Tuner is now bottom left, chorus bottom right, for better access. The cali went top right and the SV stayed top left. Both Origin pedals are always on, so it made more sense putting them into the top row. Then I started trying out different pedals to feed into the Meatsmoke and quickly got stuck on the Blueberry.
Feeding the Blueberry into the Meatsmoke is ..
Well, the sound does not gain the slightest bit of a metallic tinge. It's all organic.
Imagine a troll straight from the typewriter of Tolkien is lost in the woods and angry. It grabs the first club like object it can find, which is a rotten tree trunk, and charges off. Straight towards you. Unfortunately, you're not only heading away from it, so you don't see it coming, you're also trying out your new noise cancelling headphones that are so good that an angry troll could charge you and you would not hear a thing. Smooth elevator jazz playing on your ears, your right eye just got hit by a direct sunbeam that managed to get through the dense canopy of the trees, you're actually just in the middle of appreciating what a beautiful day this turned out to be, what with the fog in the morning, looking like rain coming, but then clearing up completely.
The hit is an immensely powerful sideways swipe that hits your upper torso and head - and comes as quite the surprise. While the size and weight of the makeshift club along with the power behind the strike all speak of a deadly force, even for a rhino, the tree trunk is rotten through at the tip, and moldy, wet wood is splintering in all directions, the force catapulting you to the floor.
That moment of impact is what happens when you run the Blueberry with the gain dimed into the Meatsmoke with the boost channel active.
It's like playing doom/sludge/stoner through a Sunn amp with a 4x15 cabinet, and then adding another amp, hooked up to a 8x10 cab. However, being extremely clumsy, you manage to kick in one of the 15" speakers and three of the 10" speakers get sliced.
While I already wrote that I had the impression that the Meatsmoke can give off that vibe of a tube amp that is pushed too hard, in the feeling that the power dips at certain points, when you feed the Blueberry into it, it sounds even more kaputt, like one or more speakers violently vomit the last of their life's blood on the inside of the baffle. It's soft, but does not lack in brutality.
I spent an hour in that realm. Now I want a doom band.
I started off by re-shuffling the pedals on the ugly board. Forgot to take a pic, though.
Tuner is now bottom left, chorus bottom right, for better access. The cali went top right and the SV stayed top left. Both Origin pedals are always on, so it made more sense putting them into the top row. Then I started trying out different pedals to feed into the Meatsmoke and quickly got stuck on the Blueberry.
Feeding the Blueberry into the Meatsmoke is ..
Well, the sound does not gain the slightest bit of a metallic tinge. It's all organic.
Imagine a troll straight from the typewriter of Tolkien is lost in the woods and angry. It grabs the first club like object it can find, which is a rotten tree trunk, and charges off. Straight towards you. Unfortunately, you're not only heading away from it, so you don't see it coming, you're also trying out your new noise cancelling headphones that are so good that an angry troll could charge you and you would not hear a thing. Smooth elevator jazz playing on your ears, your right eye just got hit by a direct sunbeam that managed to get through the dense canopy of the trees, you're actually just in the middle of appreciating what a beautiful day this turned out to be, what with the fog in the morning, looking like rain coming, but then clearing up completely.
The hit is an immensely powerful sideways swipe that hits your upper torso and head - and comes as quite the surprise. While the size and weight of the makeshift club along with the power behind the strike all speak of a deadly force, even for a rhino, the tree trunk is rotten through at the tip, and moldy, wet wood is splintering in all directions, the force catapulting you to the floor.
That moment of impact is what happens when you run the Blueberry with the gain dimed into the Meatsmoke with the boost channel active.
It's like playing doom/sludge/stoner through a Sunn amp with a 4x15 cabinet, and then adding another amp, hooked up to a 8x10 cab. However, being extremely clumsy, you manage to kick in one of the 15" speakers and three of the 10" speakers get sliced.
While I already wrote that I had the impression that the Meatsmoke can give off that vibe of a tube amp that is pushed too hard, in the feeling that the power dips at certain points, when you feed the Blueberry into it, it sounds even more kaputt, like one or more speakers violently vomit the last of their life's blood on the inside of the baffle. It's soft, but does not lack in brutality.
I spent an hour in that realm. Now I want a doom band.
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