My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[Bleezar]

How do you like the Volt Thrower ? Disssa made me his very first one and it stayed as my always on dirt for a year and a half. Meanwhile I faced it against numerous rats (Blower Box, Rattler, Cat Tail, Life v2....), but it was never threatened in any way.
Until I recently found an original v1 (Magic build). Of course first thing I did was a face off, and while the clone is very accurate, there are some things quite different. The clone is a bit more scooped (but not in a bad way, some would say more "modern"). The low / hi gain modifiers (trimpots in the original) behaves differently, like they doesn't affect the same frequency range (the Hi adds way more sizzle on the clone's control, wich I actually like : I filter the surplus afterward with a RFE). The OG have 2 secrets weapons tho that, in my opinion, justify its status : the headroom and this incredibly powerful bass knob wich can provoques earthquakes just past 3 o'clock, just like in the "demovid" by Kurt Ballou and Nate Newton, which had me drooling over this pedal back then.
That being said, I am not a rafined player and I like heavy clanky wall of sounds

The old board (Disssa made the RFE too)

 

[tidbits]

I wish I'd held onto my tubedrve a little longer, but I had it in the height of my buy & try frenzy when I was really just flipping through stuff.

I always thought it would be great with an electric piano or a synth, but I never tried it in a lower gain "only drives on peaks" setting with the bass. I think it would be great there in a similar role where my Finally is running last in chain.

 

[el murdoque]

How do you like the Volt Thrower ? Disssa made me his very first one and it stayed as my always on dirt for a year and a half. Meanwhile I faced it against numerous rats (Blower Box, Rattler, Cat Tail, Life v2....), but it was never threatened in any way.
Until I recently found an original v1 (Magic build). Of course first thing I did was a face off, and while the clone is very accurate, there are some things quite different. The clone is a bit more scooped (but not in a bad way, some would say more "modern"). The low / hi gain modifiers (trimpots in the original) behaves differently, like they doesn't affect the same frequency range (the Hi adds way more sizzle on the clone's control, wich I actually like : I filter the surplus afterward with a RFE). The OG have 2 secrets weapons tho that, in my opinion, justify its status : the headroom and this incredibly powerful bass knob wich can provoques earthquakes just past 3 o'clock, just like in the "demovid" by Kurt Ballou and Nate Newton, which had me drooling over this pedal back then.
That being said, I am not a rafined player and I like heavy clanky wall of sounds

The old board (Disssa made the RFE too)

At the moment, I'm focusing on the Tubedrve, but I've given the Volt a shot and quite liked it. I will give it a proper workout and then let you have my thoughts.
Five pedals in a single day is way too much

 

[el murdoque]

For the Nerds:

Here is the Tubedrve Frequency response with all knobs at noon, both in triode and pentode mode:

 

[el murdoque]

I toyed around with the tonal options of the Volt for a bit and plotted some results:

For comprehension: I did name the knobs in the upper row, between Gain and Master, EQ.
The other two (that are on the inside of the original pedal, if I understand that correctly) I named Filter. So this graph shows the Bass & Treble knobs at noon, and the High and Low knobs at minimum, noon and maximum. Gain and Master were at noon, and I selected the "No clipping diodes" Option.

With the knobs I named Filter at max, I set the knobs I named EQ to min, noon and max and got this:

Obviously, there is one line that is identical, since it shows EQ noon and filter max in both graphs.

I think some of these results were not as expected.

 

[darev]

I was looking at building a Volt Thrower clone (Pepperbox) when a custom one appeared for a good price on the 'verb.

I love RCO Pedals and enjoy working with Ryan but he had previously made this Pepperbox for someone else and I stumbled upon it last month. This particular version was built with a blend (on the right).

I haven't had a chance to plug it in yet. Hopefully this week. My understanding of the Volt Thrower/Pepperbox is that it is essentially a Rat with six different clipping diodes.

I'm looking forward to making a brrrrrrrrrrrr with this and to see what y'all think of a Volt Thrower's brrrrrrrrrrrrs as well.

Edit: I really love @disssa work too. Great stuff.

 

[Bleezar]

You're right it is based on the Rat but I think there is enough changes and mods to see it as a derivative or so. I'm actually in discussions with Ryan about a custom VT project; he seems really cool. If it happens , I'll have a model from each of the three builders, I could record a short comparison for the nerds, if anyone's interested.

 

[el murdoque]

I was looking at building a Volt Thrower clone (Pepperbox) when a custom one appeared for a good price on the 'verb.

I love RCO Pedals and enjoy working with Ryan but he had previously made this Pepperbox for someone else and I stumbled upon it last month. This particular version was built with a blend (on the right).
View attachment 7407841
I haven't had a chance to plug it in yet. Hopefully this week. My understanding of the Volt Thrower/Pepperbox is that it is essentially a Rat with six different clipping diodes.

I'm looking forward to making a brrrrrrrrrrrr with this and to see what y'all think of a Volt Thrower's brrrrrrrrrrrrs as well.

Edit: I really love @disssa work too. Great stuff.

The Volt Thrower is at its base a RAT, yes. And it has six different clipping options, too. However, the original circuit has been modified for a better bass response it runs on two LM308s instead of one, plus the "Filter" has been kicked out and replaced by a two band EQ, and another, subtle acting two band EQ is found on the Volt Thrower's inside and on the Volt's outside.

I'd say a humble pedal developer will call it a RAT, while a not-so-humble marketing department might go ahead and call it a completely new circuit that is loosely based on the same principle as the RAT was.

If I have my history lessons right, then Scott Burnham wanted to solder a 470 ohm resistor into his circuit, but picked up a 47 ohm one, and as the result, the circuit did overdrive the rails of the LM308 Opamp, which was not intended, but a happy accident - and this is the special sauce that makes a RAT a RAT.

 

[el murdoque]

The sound and the feeling the Tubedrve provides is neither that of a tube amp, nor is it that of a drive pedal. The closest I can come to describing what happens is "An expensive piece of studio gear that adds some tube magic" I could be totally wrong since I have not had any conversation with anyone at Singular Audio, but I do Imagine the first iteration of the Tubedrve was not the pedal, but one of the rack mounted units. I do imagine that the intended workflow with these was that you have your track running through the unit while you make minimal adjustments to receive a track that sounds (slightly) better than before, because you ran it through an all analog device with tubes in. My guess would be that while you can run the Tubedrve on any of your audio tracks and that it will work with nearly every kind of instrument, someone also realized that it's really great for guitar and/or bass guitar use, and from there it was not too far to create a mono version of the rack unit that runs off 9V DC, center negative. The rack units do sport a wet/dry mix knob, and I think the pedal does not have that because when used on a pedalboard, you'll go for more gain anyway and the intended use of the wet/dry mix is for instruments or tracks that are meant to sound clean, so blending in some dry signal is one more tool to dial it back further. You know about these legendary pieces of vintage gear, like the old Echoplex units that were not only used for their intended purpose but also just put in the signal chain because their tube driven preamps sounded so good, guitarists used them for that tone alone. I think the Tubedrve aims for something of that particular vibe, but it's not a huge tape delay unit with the tape delay bit switched off, it is a simple tube gain stage that can give you that vibe - and that is the intended use of the thing. Therefore, you don't really feel like your playing is pushing an amp that pushes back. It's also not feeling like a drive pedal that needs to be reigned in - nor does it feel neutral. Playing it, it feels like its own thing, with its own way to respond to whatever you do. Of course we're still talking about (tube) drive. That is like driving a car. You get into one you've never driven before?
Well, you can expect that you will have to get in the front left seat (unless in Bhutan, Fiji, Malawi, Tuvalu or any other of the countries that drive on the left), you can expect a steering wheel, pedals to accelerate and brake, as well as some means to get that thing in gear. You'll just get in, familiarise yourself with the controls and then you're off down the road. Because it's a car and you know how cars work. The same goes for the Tubedrve. You know your drive pedals, you can play this and instantly feel at home doing so.

 

[el murdoque]

Back to the sound of the Tubedrve. As I already mentioned, both the pentode and triode modes have their merits, but for now, I've set the switch to pentode and leave it there. To quote the google AI:

Running a tube in pentode mode offers higher power, more headroom, and brighter, punchier sound with odd-order harmonics; triode mode offers lower power (often half), smoother, warmer tone with more compression, richer even-order harmonics, and vintage character, with the key difference being pentodes add screen/suppressor grids for efficiency, while triode mode effectively removes them, making the tube behave like a simpler, less powerful triode, ideal for switchable amps to get different flavors from one amp.

For light settings, I actually prefer the added harshness and less compressed sound of the pentode operation. Using those settings in a mix I was more than a little surprised at how significant the difference between running a dry signal with a little EQ and running the same signal with the Singular Audio Tubedrve pedal. My settings were Pentode operation, Drive around 10 o'clock and Bias around 2 o'clock with the master relatively low, to match unity. When you judge unity by ear alone, you feel like you're losing a bit of low end. Nothing drastic. Something even I, as someone who values low end very highly, can easily stomach. Looking at machine readouts, I'm actually setting the Tubedrve signal a little lower than the dry signal, because it feels louder to my ears. Placed in the aforementioned mix, the bass takes a step forward. I often dread the moment when I try a new pedal in such circumstances.
I've been around the block when it comes to dirt pedal and preamp setups. You sculpt the ultimate tone, so beautifully pronounced and accentuated, you want to get on your knees and weep. The equivalent of what the old masters in Rome did with marble. Sculptures that seem translucent, soft - so intricate they trick the eye, just for your ears this time. Then you feed your glorious new bedroom tone into the mix and get a slap in the face, a cold bucket of water over your head and that kid from the Simpsons pointing at you going "Haw-haw!".
Your bedroom tone sucks in a mix. The lows that were meant as the bedrock foundation to rest the entire band on are not bedrock at all, they are a mudslide in a swamp. Since you scooped the hell out of your signal, there are no mids to speak of, so apart from the mud down low, the only thing you can hear from the bass is fret clank, because you're suddenly playing super hard, trying to compensate the lack of volume and presence. I've you've toyed around with bass sounds, you know what I mean, and you know that one is justified in fearing that the freshly sculpted tone might turn belly up when introduced to other instruments at the same volume.
Now imagine my surprise as I found that the Tubedrve in the settings I chose suddenly held a much better presence in the mix. The upper mids or lower treble were more pronounced, more present and easier to detect for the ear. This, however, is not achieved by simply boosting the mids and creating that honky sound that is oh-so terrible when you're sitting alone in your room, no this is simply a byproduct of the added harmonics that sound like a glorious tube device that adds just a hint of drive to your signal.


I'm actually used to do the opposite: Once I find that magic tone pedal, I anticipate that employing it in my signal chain will cause me to get shooed back in the mix, and then I find means to compensate for that.
On the pedalboard I currently use in my metal band, I run the Audio Kitchen Fake Plastic Trees into the Verellen Meatsmoke. Both devices have a superb low gain breakup and stacking that is just "Chef's Kiss!"
However, the FPT comes without a mids knob and the Meatsmoke comes with a Fender Tone Stack, meaning the mids are cut only - so the stack of those will need a bit of help, and I run an Aguilar DB316 Midrange EQ after them to help along.
With the Tubedrve, it's the wild combination of both the device that makes the sound more beautiful and at the same time the device that gives the signal a little push forward. That's wild.

 

[el murdoque]

Here's a tiny snippet of those settings to showcase what I mean.

 

[chiphaleonbass]

View attachment 7411445

Here's a tiny snippet of those settings to showcase what I mean.

Sounds great! I bailed on the Tubedrve too soon; was a great sounding saturation pedal! Curious if you’ve tried one of these yet? It has cured all bass overdrive GAS I’ve had

 

[el murdoque]

Sounds great! I bailed on the Tubedrve too soon; was a great sounding saturation pedal! Curious if you’ve tried one of these yet? It has cured all bass overdrive GAS I’ve had

No, not yet. I've only encountered a single one in the wild that was not offered for a collector's price, but I was hunting for something else at that time and when I changed my mind and wanted to buy it a few days later, I was too late.

 

[OldShark]

Of course, readers of this Jounal would not appreciate a pedal curing the Jounalist's overdrive GAS in anyway.

 

[el murdoque]

Of course, readers of this Jounal would not appreciate a pedal curing the Jounalist's overdrive GAS in anyway.

Looking at my setups, I have a total of 7 pedals in use that are either dirt pedals or dirt-capable preamps that are set in a way that provides dirt.
On top of that, there is a shelf in my den that currently houses:
-Effectrode Tube Drive
-BJFe Blueberry
-Origin DCX Bass

That's the shelf of pedals that are not on any of my pedalboards and not even in some kind of rotation.
They also are too good to part with them, and I frequently test them against others, as a reference.

I AM still thinking about a way to get the Effectrode mounted on my big board, but that would require swapping out the Cioks 4 with a Cioks 8, plus some significant changes in pedal routing and on top of that, pretty much a rebuild of half the board, since I'd have to move some pedals from the top layer to the bottom layer. It seems that the threat of buying around €225 worth of gear and a full day's work is still enough to scare away my wish to have that pedal on there - but that's not what I was trying to get to. I was trying to get to the point that the shelf, currently housing 3 pedals is large enough for at least 6 of them,
and it's one from that Swedish company, so it's cheap and easy to buy more of them.

 

[gillento]

No, not yet. I've only encountered a single one in the wild that was not offered for a collector's price, but I was hunting for something else at that time and when I changed my mind and wanted to buy it a few days later, I was too late.

That would have been mine a couple of years ago….. Sold almost all my drive pedals back when I loved my Capo.

 

[el murdoque]

That would have been s couple of years ago….. Sold almost all my drive pedals back when I loved my Capo.

I think it was in the range of €125-130.

 

[Teryup]

On the topic of Nobels overdrives, has anyone in the thread tried the Nordland ODR-C? It is apparently from the original designer of the ODR-1 but with expanded controls and improved build quality. It can also boost mids which has been a topic recently.

 

[gillento]

I think it was in the range of €125-130.

Yes, that's possible, one of the battery cables was detached.

 

[chiphaleonbass]

On the topic of Nobels overdrives, has anyone in the thread tried the Nordland ODR-C? It is apparently from the original designer of the ODR-1 but with expanded controls and improved build quality. It can also boost mids which has been a topic recently.

I have owned it and I used it for quite a while.

There's a modder out of Nashville who after this did some adjusting to it that made it sound even better. Kinda regret selling this until I got the old ODR-B and now I'm content

EDIT**** PAST ME DIDN'T DO WELL AT LABELING THE SAMPLES.... DON'T PAY THOSE ANY ATTENTION