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My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal
- Thread starter el murdoque
- Start date
Yeah, I was pretty close to ordering it myself before I saw that.
not sure but i think transformers need to have lower headroom for the transformer distortion/colour. otherwise it'll be like having a high headroom tube
There is a Canadian brand that is called Broughton.
They have an Overdrive on their website, called the Terraformer.
I happened to surf across the Broughton website driven there by one of my personal enablers (in this case, @Charlie Tuna is to blame), and saw the Terraformer and clicked on it out of curiosity, surprised that I could actually put it in my cart.
I thought this must be an error, since Broughton pedals always sell out within seconds. I clicked on buy, went to the checkout, with the plan of getting to that last "Please review and confirm your order" page, to see if these really are available.
I did not want to place any mental capacity into the decision whether or not to buy one of these before knowing whether they truly are in stock or not.
....Well, it turns out I don't have to put any mental capacity into the decision at all. The Broughton website does not have that "Please review and confirm your order" page. Instead it shows a "Thank you for your order" page.
I literally just bought a pedal by accident.
They have an Overdrive on their website, called the Terraformer.
I happened to surf across the Broughton website driven there by one of my personal enablers (in this case, @Charlie Tuna is to blame), and saw the Terraformer and clicked on it out of curiosity, surprised that I could actually put it in my cart.
I thought this must be an error, since Broughton pedals always sell out within seconds. I clicked on buy, went to the checkout, with the plan of getting to that last "Please review and confirm your order" page, to see if these really are available.
I did not want to place any mental capacity into the decision whether or not to buy one of these before knowing whether they truly are in stock or not.
....Well, it turns out I don't have to put any mental capacity into the decision at all. The Broughton website does not have that "Please review and confirm your order" page. Instead it shows a "Thank you for your order" page.
I literally just bought a pedal by accident.
I actually came by to check my private messages and found the one by Mr. Tuna that was sent 2 minutes prior, so it was still fresh. Clicking on the link revealed a well stocked Broughton Audio shop, with multiple pedals available, so I did not really believe that it's available ... and ... yeah.
Mr. Tuna is a a former member of the Church of St. Joshua, and It might well be that he's still getting intel about release dates.
Sounds like you may be first in line if Mr. Jounalist, @el murdoque doesn't bond with his.
Sounds like you may be first in line if Mr. Jounalist, @el murdoque doesn't bond with his.
He is so far away. Like on the other end of the world. Maybe. Germany to Alabama is probably not economical for shipping. I would have gotten one because I could have tried it out and if I didn't like it, I could have easily sold it for what I paid or more to the Broughs. Demo sounded pretty good, but it sounded a tad bit dark.
I did revisit the Effectrode Tube Drive today, and I must revise my revision.
I put it into a different environment - in front of my reggae board and played it with the gain really low, and here this thing really shines. I got lots of boosted bass going on on that board, so I tilted the tone knob towards the right to push treble, and I did not detect any low end loss, but the high end got a fair bit crisper. With the gain somewhere between 0 and 2, I got a touch sensitive low gain drive that really felt like it did a lot to do the magic tone enhancing thing.
One thing I noted: Note separation. When you play double stops, it's really two notes ringing, each with its own drive and decay, it seems. They don't bloom into a single entity, but stay on their own.
The response stays even across the fretboard; My right hand triggers the exact same amount of dirt, no matter where my left hand is, but the colour and timbre of the driven notes varies from low notes that sound raspy to past the 12th fret where it gets creamy. The chunk size of the sizzles gets finer, the higher the frequency of the root note is.
The higher gain settings, especially with the Tube Drive within the signal chain of my metal board, did something nice, no doubt, but it did not click with me at all. This is something completely different.
I put it into a different environment - in front of my reggae board and played it with the gain really low, and here this thing really shines. I got lots of boosted bass going on on that board, so I tilted the tone knob towards the right to push treble, and I did not detect any low end loss, but the high end got a fair bit crisper. With the gain somewhere between 0 and 2, I got a touch sensitive low gain drive that really felt like it did a lot to do the magic tone enhancing thing.
One thing I noted: Note separation. When you play double stops, it's really two notes ringing, each with its own drive and decay, it seems. They don't bloom into a single entity, but stay on their own.
The response stays even across the fretboard; My right hand triggers the exact same amount of dirt, no matter where my left hand is, but the colour and timbre of the driven notes varies from low notes that sound raspy to past the 12th fret where it gets creamy. The chunk size of the sizzles gets finer, the higher the frequency of the root note is.
The higher gain settings, especially with the Tube Drive within the signal chain of my metal board, did something nice, no doubt, but it did not click with me at all. This is something completely different.
This might be one of the shortest reviews of the entire Jounal.
Broughton Terraformer:
It's okay, but boring.
Broughton Terraformer:
It's okay, but boring.
Not as functional as the CMC. The CMC is incredibly functional. I'd even go as far and claim that being incredibly functional is the CMC's party trick and was the driving force behind the entire design process.
The Terraformer is functional. Three band EQ, blend control and gain knob. The EQ is active and can do cut and boost - yet the overall sound is just a bit on the darker side. The gain knob works as advertised, never venturing off the "Overdrive" characteristics, even though it can do a lot of gain.
The feeling of playing the drive is okay, but not exciting.
I put it side by side with the Tube Drive and the DCX, and the tube driven gentleman rocker and the two trick pony from England both had that little something that lets you keep playing while switching back to the Terraformer felt as exciting as a Hippie imagines the job of an accountant.
I had a chance to borrow one.
I came to the same conclusion.
The demo I saw on YT told me the same. That‘s why I was referring to the CMC review. I REALLY like that one.
OK, IMHO that last sentence does qualify as good enough for your usual review style. I'm relating to the review itself, not the evaluated product...
Does it have shortcomings? Not really. It works - as advertised. So what am I complaining about here?
While the quote "Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things" (Yoda) totally works for a little green creature living alone on a swamp planet, mastering the Force, it's not really my motto to live by when selecting a machine to provide overdrive to my clean signal. Adventure and excitement are at the forefront of what I'm looking for in a dirt pedal. And how does that work?
You have a little box that you feed signal in, and that signal gets clipped and EQed a bit and leaves the box - what's exciting about one of them and boring about another?
This is seems like a strictly philosophical question, but there are special quirks that other pedals manage to do, that several people, playing several styles, all scattered over the planet can agree on.
One exciting pedal would be Audio Kitchen's Fake Plastic Trees. This is a literal amp in a box, since a tiny little power amp drives a tiny little power soak on the inside, and the feeling of how the pedal connects your ears to your fingertips is awesome. There is considerable "push back" of the pedal that fights to stay clean when you set it to a little bit of drive, and that gives you an awesome dynamic feeling of playing the thing. The BJFe Blueberry? It does that thing with the mids that creates an image in my mind of the frequency spectrum that qualifies as mids for bass having a wild party, excitedly hitting a piñata and collecting the candy. The Origin DCX Bass? It does several exciting things, just read the review.
Al of these aforementioned pedals essentially do some EQ and send the signal through some sort of clipping device, same as the Terraformer, but while all of these use some sort of exciting party trick to inspire me to play in a certain way, the Terraformer leaves my mind in a grey cubicle, hunched over a printed out Excel sheet.
It might be that it's me and not the pedal. Maybe I'm a little over saturated from so much saturation in the past, but when I hook my bass to any of the pedals I hold in high regard and play a while, whenever I get back to trying out the Terraformer, the vivid landscape in my mind grows dull and grey.
I don't want something that excels at inspiring me, not something that makes me think of excel sheets.
Maybe it's me, and no blame falls to the Terraformer. It's a hard working 9-5 pedal that does its best to do its job and support a family, and I'm the unthankful stay at home parent, complaining about how the day to day grind has replaced the excitement and I want out.
I don't know - but there's no spark.
