My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[el murdoque]

The Tonehammer, on the other hand, is exactly as I would have expected.

Does anyone here have a link to a source where, in great and painstaking detail, is explained what the AGS does?
I did learn that the pedal is actually older than the amp, I always thought it was the other way, but it seems that in the pedal format, we have the OG Tonehammer product.


It will not get you a sharp, glassy sound at all. It's also not exactly airy.
What it does, is big, round warm and fat. I'm used to that from the amp head.
One thing that always bothered me to some degree also applies here: I'd love to have two of the parametric mids EQ sets instead of one.
It's somewhat nice to be able to boost the bass and then cut a little in the low mids for a big sound, but it's also great to boost the high mids a little for a bit more definition and to give the sound some elbow - but one has to choose between those two.

The bass knob is centered at 40Hz, the treble knob at 4kHz, the mids can go from 170-1000Hz, and the EQ is post drive. It's also pre-drive, though.
I don't really understand what's happening here. When I turn the gain up enough for grind, and I hit a low note, I get grind. When I turn down the bass now, I lose the low end, but the grind stays the same. My personal explanation would be that the signal hits the clippers first and then the EQ pulls down the lows, but the harmonics created in the clipping stage remain.
But it's not that simple. Maybe there are multiple gain stages, and one sits before the EQ with another coming after it?

With the AGS off, it feels very amp-like.
I'm gonna go ahead and compare it tube driven and tube-like devices.
The Verellen Meatsmoke, and also to some degree, the Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees, have that sag in the middle of a note's attack when you set them right. To my ear and to my fingers it feels like the device has bitten off more than it can chew. The note comes in hot, with the initial attack having a massive punch to it, but just after that, it feels a little weaker than it should, and just after that it's right where it belongs again. I've felt this on tube amps when the gain was set just past the point of breakup and while it sounds weak on paper, it's glorious in person.
The Tonehammer does not really do that to an extend where I notice it.
But nonetheless, it has a healthy amount of push back and clears up on note decay. The sound is, within the confines of the trademark Tonehammer sound (round, warm, never shrill), extremely organic. If you want a metallic sound from this, you better put on some fresh roundwounds on your Stingray, because it has to come from the bass, the pedal does not do metallic.

 

[projectapollo]

I use the Tone Hammer DI quite a bit, but with standard CCM-style with P-Bass and fresh rounds. IME, with AGS off the preamp is quite clean and not ampy at all. It's actually a very nice preamp/DI with three ways to power it.

With AGS on, it's a bit more tricky. The AGS circuit is wired into the mids control, per Aguilar (below). I normally run it AGS on, with Gain at Noon, mid frequency at Noon, mid level deeply cut to about 9 o'clock. Bass and treble to taste. Output volume trimmed for unity gain when switching the pedal off.

I made the mistake of running the mid-frequency too low and with the mid-cut it was interfering with the bass control making it anemic. Keeping the mid-freq higher and cut a lot, the bass control still responds more normally.

The gain setting depends on the output of your bass, of course. The goal being clean tone when playing lighter with fingers, dirt starting when digging in, and very saturated with a pick. The TH is one of the most velocity sensitive dirt circuits I've ever used. Lots of useful dynamic range.

I can get the THDI to sound very similar to the DCX Bass (in its EQ mode) with DCX drive set quite high and plenty of bass/treble boost. Again, this is all dialed in for a P-bass with rounds.

Aguilar's Description

• AGS changes the gain structure and EQ interactively with the gain knob position. This produces a "vintage voiced" EQ that adapts as you adjust the gain knob. The lower the gain knob setting, the "flatter" the EQ applied. The higher you set the gain knob, the more saturated the gain structure becomes, and the more the bass is tightened and the treble smoothed.
• AGS provides a continuously variable boost depending on the position of the gain knob. The higher the gain setting, the more boost you will get.
• The AGS circuitry surrounds the midrange controls, enabling you to get a huge variety of tonal characteristics by simply adjusting the gain and midrange controls. What this gives you is a flexible control to get a wide range of tonal colors.
• With the Gain knob set from 7 o'clock to 11 o'clock, AGS gives up to 12dB of clean boost with warm, glassy, vintage EQ.
• With the Gain knob set from 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock, AGS gives up to 15dB boost, with a little vintage growl as the EQ tightens up the bass.
• With the Gain set from 1 o'clock to maximum, AGS gives up to 16dB boost full of warm, vintage saturation. The EQ tightens up the bass even more for a smoother response.

 

[el murdoque]

Aguilar's Description

• AGS changes the gain structure and EQ interactively with the gain knob position. This produces a "vintage voiced" EQ that adapts as you adjust the gain knob. The lower the gain knob setting, the "flatter" the EQ applied. The higher you set the gain knob, the more saturated the gain structure becomes, and the more the bass is tightened and the treble smoothed.
• AGS provides a continuously variable boost depending on the position of the gain knob. The higher the gain setting, the more boost you will get.
• The AGS circuitry surrounds the midrange controls, enabling you to get a huge variety of tonal characteristics by simply adjusting the gain and midrange controls. What this gives you is a flexible control to get a wide range of tonal colors.
• With the Gain knob set from 7 o'clock to 11 o'clock, AGS gives up to 12dB of clean boost with warm, glassy, vintage EQ.
• With the Gain knob set from 11 o'clock to 1 o'clock, AGS gives up to 15dB boost, with a little vintage growl as the EQ tightens up the bass.
• With the Gain set from 1 o'clock to maximum, AGS gives up to 16dB boost full of warm, vintage saturation. The EQ tightens up the bass even more for a smoother response.

That's what I found as well. What I'm reading between the lines is that you get a gain boost along with HPF and LPF, the higher you ride the gain, the more HPF and LPF you get.


Some digginng here on TB revealed this graph:

From this thread: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/ag...mer-500-3-8lbs-500w-megathread.717712/page-92

It shows a rolloff in the lows that starts as high as 300Hz, but I want to direct your eye to how the Y axis is labeled. The bass rolloff looks drastic, but it's actually only -1,5dB at 50Hz.
The treble rolloff is much steeper and starts at 4k. This is what the TH500 amp does with the drive knob set at 3 o'clock - and we already established that inquiring minds have determined that AGS active is about equal to that particular knob position.

I think we discussed what "Amp like" means in this thread before @projectapollo became a regular, but in a nutshell:
One thing we all agreed on was that pedals we perceive as amp like create the feeling that the pedal pushes towards a clean sound. When you set it that gentle playing yields clean tones, harder playing yields dirt and pick playing is distorted all the time, and you are under the impression that the pedal "wants" to produce a clean sound, that is an amp like quality.
There are pedals that have absolutely no momentum (for example the DCX once you flip the switch to OD mode) and just hang in there, and there are pedals that push forward, wanting to stay dirty - and especially those are perceived as "pedal-like".


So from my understanding, the AGS creates a gentle HPF, a steep LPF at 4k, and a small bump in the 2k range, plus a ton of gain on top.
With the EQ provided, you will not defeat the 2k bump, since the mids knob ends at 1k and the treble knob starts at 4k.
But the Rolloff also means that you can get away with a dirt sound without using a cab sim. I tried in my setup, where the Broughton RFE acts as my cab sim, and while the sound was not entirely unpleasant like standard dirt pedals produce, I liked the tone with the RFE active more.

 

[el murdoque]

I just agreed to visit an impromptu jam session in a brewery tonight, and I'll have to see what to bring. My big pedal board is a test bench at present, with loose pedals dangling around and my metal band pedalboard is too gainy to play normal music.
Will I fashion a quick and dirty solution on the quick?

 

[Charlie Tuna]

I just agreed to visit an impromptu jam session in a brewery tonight, and I'll have to see what to bring. My big pedal board is a test bench at present, with loose pedals dangling around and my metal band pedalboard is too gainy to play normal music.
Will I fashion a quick and dirty solution on the quick?

Lucky you! Tuner, Cali76CB, FPT and BDPG should give you a nice, thick sound yet able to go bright if you need. Pull back FPT Root and Branch and the mids’ll come forward. — or just do a 76 and DCX combo for ease.

 

[el murdoque]

Lucky you! Tuner, Cali76CB, FPT and BDPG should give you a nice, thick sound yet able to go bright if you need. Pull back FPT Root and Branch and the mids’ll come forward. — or just do a 76 and DCX combo for ease.

Good suggestion, but I'll need to go direct into the board, and none of the mentioned pedals have a balanced out.

 

[GrowlerBox]

I just agreed to visit an impromptu jam session in a brewery tonight, and I'll have to see what to bring. My big pedal board is a test bench at present, with loose pedals dangling around and my metal band pedalboard is too gainy to play normal music.
Will I fashion a quick and dirty solution on the quick?

That’s exactly the sort of situation in which I’ve used the THDI as a one-pedal board, powered by the board. Don’t know if that gives you time to figure out the pedal, but I’m sure a chap with your sensibilities could do that in vivo .

 

[Charlie Tuna]

Good suggestion, but I'll need to go direct into the board, and none of the mentioned pedals have a balanced out.

Considering Origin Effects just dropped the Fifteen, I think the Bassrig SV would've been a good choice to test out in this situation and potentially fuel some GAS...

 

[Zbysek]

The bass knob is centered at 40Hz, the treble knob at 4kHz, the mids can go from 170-1000Hz, and the EQ is post drive. It's also pre-drive, though.
I don't really understand what's happening here. When I turn the gain up enough for grind, and I hit a low note, I get grind. When I turn down the bass now, I lose the low end, but the grind stays the same. My personal explanation would be that the signal hits the clippers first and then the EQ pulls down the lows, but the harmonics created in the clipping stage remain.
But it's not that simple. Maybe there are multiple gain stages, and one sits before the EQ with another coming after it?

IME, there is more saturation with mids boosted and less saturation with mids cut - that suggests mids control being pre drive.

There is no change in saturation while moving the Bass control. That suggests Bass control being post drive.

 

[sunbeast]

Considering Origin Effects just dropped the Fifteen, I think the Bassrig SV would've been a good choice to test out in this situation and potentially fuel some GAS...

I picked one up! It’s the most I’ve ever spent on an analog pedal by far (and I think the Eventide H90 is the only pedal I’ve spent more on period, and by less than $50 for an open-box deal), and somewhat of an impulse buy though I’ve had a lot of good luck using the Universal Audio B15 plug-in for recording over the last few years and the demos sound great so it seemed like a really good end of board option since I’ve had some mixed luck with my sound to front-of-house lately. I need to put it through its paces in the next few days, hopefully it’ll convince me to sell off all my other amp-in-a-box pedals that I like but rarely use for various reasons (wishful thinking!).

That's what I found as well. What I'm reading between the lines is that you get a gain boost along with HPF and LPF, the higher you ride the gain, the more HPF and LPF you get.


Some digginng here on TB revealed this graph:
View attachment 7373624

From this thread: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/ag...mer-500-3-8lbs-500w-megathread.717712/page-92

It shows a rolloff in the lows that starts as high as 300Hz, but I want to direct your eye to how the Y axis is labeled. The bass rolloff looks drastic, but it's actually only -1,5dB at 50Hz.
The treble rolloff is much steeper and starts at 4k. This is what the TH500 amp does with the drive knob set at 3 o'clock - and we already established that inquiring minds have determined that AGS active is about equal to that particular knob position.

I think we discussed what "Amp like" means in this thread before @projectapollo became a regular, but in a nutshell:
One thing we all agreed on was that pedals we perceive as amp like create the feeling that the pedal pushes towards a clean sound. When you set it that gentle playing yields clean tones, harder playing yields dirt and pick playing is distorted all the time, and you are under the impression that the pedal "wants" to produce a clean sound, that is an amp like quality.
There are pedals that have absolutely no momentum (for example the DCX once you flip the switch to OD mode) and just hang in there, and there are pedals that push forward, wanting to stay dirty - and especially those are perceived as "pedal-like".


So from my understanding, the AGS creates a gentle HPF, a steep LPF at 4k, and a small bump in the 2k range, plus a ton of gain on top.
With the EQ provided, you will not defeat the 2k bump, since the mids knob ends at 1k and the treble knob starts at 4k.
But the Rolloff also means that you can get away with a dirt sound without using a cab sim. I tried in my setup, where the Broughton RFE acts as my cab sim, and while the sound was not entirely unpleasant like standard dirt pedals produce, I liked the tone with the RFE active more.

I think from that thread that the intensity of this HPF and LPF curve is not Gain-related, but Drive-related. Meaning that in the Tonehammer v1 pedal it would basically be a fixed curve. This makes the TH v2 more versatile by allowing you to push the Gain to increase the amount of distortion while adjusting Drive to change the intensity of this EQ curve (which is basically like a cab-sim)- presumably the Drive control on v2 and the amplifiers is both raising the volume into the clipping section (increasing gain) while also blending in this EQ curve? Or does the Drive control not really add gain?

I really need to get my hands on one of these to play around with- when I tried one before I didn't really understand the interplay very well (and definitely had different tonal goals than I do today).

 

[el murdoque]

I think from that thread that the intensity of this HPF and LPF curve is not Gain-related, but Drive-related. Meaning that in the Tonehammer v1 pedal it would basically be a fixed curve. This makes the TH v2 more versatile by allowing you to push the Gain to increase the amount of distortion while adjusting Drive to change the intensity of this EQ curve (which is basically like a cab-sim)- presumably the Drive control on v2 and the amplifiers is both raising the volume into the clipping section (increasing gain) while also blending in this EQ curve? Or does the Drive control not really add gain?

I really need to get my hands on one of these to play around with- when I tried one before I didn't really understand the interplay very well (and definitely had different tonal goals than I do today).

The v1 is heavier, has less width and can be powered through batteries or phantom power. The v2 has the aux in and headphone out (mono) and the drive control.

In the Tonehammer thread, they say that the activating the AGS switch equals turning the drive knob to the 3 o'clock position.

 

[sunbeast]

The v1 is heavier, has less width and can be powered through batteries or phantom power. The v2 has the aux in and headphone out (mono) and the drive control.

In the Tonehammer thread, they say that the activating the AGS switch equals turning the drive knob to the 3 o'clock position.

Yes I'm mostly curious if the Drive control is audibly just blending in that EQ response curve or also adding more grit/volume at the same time?

 

[projectapollo]

I picked one up! It’s the most I’ve ever spent on an analog pedal by far ...... I need to put it through its paces in the next few days, hopefully it’ll convince me to sell off all my other amp-in-a-box pedals that I like but rarely use for various reasons (wishful thinking!).

I look forward to your report! The Origin 15 is quite pricey and I'm trying to learn to appreciate the band limiting cab sim you very well characterized in the other thread.

But while we are here in the dirt journal, I will say the Origin 15 (using the 1/4" out) is a pretty darn nice dirt pedal. Many of the same virtues described here in the dirt journal with regard to the Origin SV.

 

[sunbeast]

I look forward to your report! The Origin 15 is quite pricey and I'm trying to learn to appreciate the band limiting cab sim you very well characterized in the other thread.

But while we are here in the dirt journal, I will say the Origin 15 (using the 1/4" out) is a pretty darn nice dirt pedal. Many of the same virtues described here in the dirt journal with regard to the Origin SV.

I just played around with it for an hour or so used as a preamp from the 1/4” into the FX Return of one of my amps and really dig it and it’s midrange character. It’s making me wish I had an Origin Super Vintage on hand to compare to though. I’m not a huge SVT fan (love the power and feel, but usually too thick for me in practice), but do love the Ampeg 810 sound. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get an opportunity to play around with the Fifteen as a DI through headphones and studio monitors to feel out the cab-sim. As someone who often plays with what others might call excessive high-pass filtering (I’ve been known to use an FDeck HPF set near 100hz), the cab-sim might be perfect for me. It actually looks very similar on paper to the software HPF and LPF curves I used in a recent recording session, though I also boosted bass and treble on my pedalboard beforehand using the DCX. I’ll have to play around with that into the Fifteen and see how it handles that bass boost (hopefully not too fuzzy). All in all I now see the attraction for these Bassrig pedals!

 

[el murdoque]

Yes I'm mostly curious if the Drive control is audibly just blending in that EQ response curve or also adding more grit/volume at the same time?

I do think the mentioned boost is what brings the drive - those 16 dB are most likely added as pre gain and not after the EQ.

 

[el murdoque]

I ended up bringing the big board. I carefully took off the pieces that are not yet velcroed down and re-assembled on site.

Here's what I can report:

1. Phasers seem to be not entirely my thing. I used the Wombtone a lot and tried different settings - envelope, slow speed, tap tempo matched to the beat, different ramps and all that - While I got some cool sounds here and there, it never felt inspiring.

2. My Chorus sidequest is over. The Echo Fix was taken to the jam, and it totally delivered. That chorus is as close to the perfect device as I can get presently.
I still wish it could go slower, but now I do so low key, and it's not a major issue any more.

 

[el murdoque]

Back to the Tonehammer.

To my ear, the logistics of the audio path are:
AGS/Drive is either just before or just after the point where the gain is.
The parametric mids are pre clipping, while bass and treble are post.
That is a quite interesting find. I was interested in the JHS Lari Basilio Overdrive or the Harddrive because they do have that exact feature.

That makes the Tonehammer quite versatile when you want to use it as a drive pedal instead of a preamp.

Also, I was quite surprised when I did some A/B while running the TH straight into the board, no other pedals in the chain and listening back to it through headphones. With AGS off, the gain low, master set to unity and the EQ at noon, there is very little color. I would have assumed there's a clear difference between the pedal on and off, but there's not.

 

[gillento]

......

Also, I was quite surprised when I did some A/B while running the TH straight into the board, no other pedals in the chain and listening back to it through headphones. With AGS off, the gain low, master set to unity and the EQ at noon, there is very little color. I would have assumed there's a clear difference between the pedal on and off, but there's not.

Got mine yesterday, and did the same thing this morning.
Surprised as well. From my memory of approx. 12 years ago, it had added lots of low mids just by firing it up. Apparently it didn't.

 

[sunbeast]

I do think the mentioned boost is what brings the drive - those 16 dB are most likely added as pre gain and not after the EQ.

But on the amplifier (and also the TH DI v2?), presumably the Drive control makes that 16dB more or less than 16dB? Meaning that turning the Drive all the way down would be less than 16dB of boost and turning it all the way up would result in more than 16dB? I’m curious how it simultaneously increases saturation and increase the intensity of that HPF/LPF-style EQ curve. I love cool circuits like that. Same with hearing about the simultaneous before/after-gain effect of the EQ on the DCX dependent on where the knobs are set. Cool and clever!

 

[dedpool1052]

Same with hearing about the simultaneous before/after-gain effect of the EQ on the DCX dependent on where the knobs are set. Cool and clever!

Agreed.
I'd heard good things about the DCX bass, but leaned towards "ah, I've got those tones covered with other pedals "
And then read here about that unique implementation of the EQ.
Then I was like "alright, I know it's spendy, but I've gotta try this."
Not the slightest bit disappointed.