My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[mouthmw]

bassists often work with equipment that's more flat in its response, especially in the treble - either by going directly into FOH, or by using modern bass cabs (with tweeters).
I'd say it would all be fine if the treble boost saw a +5dB increase.

Most woofers start dropping off at 5-6kHz I’d say, tweeters go into the annyoing 15k+ range but it’s common knowledge (and sense) not to use tweeters with drive, distortion and fuzz pedals. Most dirt pedals sound pretty bad going directly into FOH unless you’re using either LPF and/or a cab sim of some sort. Fuzz sounds the worst, drive is a lesser offender.

 

[el murdoque]

Most woofers start dropping off at 5-6kHz I’d say, tweeters go into the annyoing 15k+ range but it’s common knowledge (and sense) not to use tweeters with drive, distortion and fuzz pedals. Most dirt pedals sound pretty bad going directly into FOH unless you’re using either LPF and/or a cab sim of some sort. Fuzz sounds the worst, drive is a lesser offender.

I was more referring to the amps than the cabinets.

 

[mouthmw]

I was more referring to the amps than the cabinets.

Same would apply to guitarists then. Amps are hardly useful without going through speakers/cabs.
I still think dirt sounds meh to bad when going direct, without that high end roll off that a cab/cab sim or lpf would do.

EDIT: That said, I prefer when the dirt pedal doesn't roll off too much high end as I prefer to do that myself with either my lpf/bddi combo or my amp/cab setup.

 

[el murdoque]

Same would apply to guitarists then. Amps are hardly useful without going through speakers/cabs.
I still think dirt sounds meh to bad when going direct, without that high end roll off that a cab/cab sim or lpf would do.

EDIT: That said, I prefer when the dirt pedal doesn't roll off too much high end as I prefer to do that myself with either my lpf/bddi combo or my amp/cab setup.

I meant that bass amps are more linear in their response while guitar amps often have an abysmal amount of treble boost baked in.

 

[mouthmw]

I meant that bass amps are more linear in their response while guitar amps often have an abysmal amount of treble boost baked in.

I guess that depends on the amp, but sure, bass works better with a linear response compared to guitar which is why most basses sound good when just plugged in directly (for clean tones).

 

[Mike_Empress]

View attachment 7493651I'd like to highlight this again. Although taken with janky hobbyist equipment and measured by feeding white noise, the maxed out treble is barely enough to offset the baked in drop off and my eyes and ears agree that this measurement is close to the mark.
I do LPF my signal so I'm not really interested in anything above 5-6k, but while the bass boosts solidly and reaches the advertised +15dB, the treble could have gotten a little more. The Drive is a great pedal and I really like it, don't get me wrong - but this would be one spot of possible improvement I can instantly put my finger on. I guess that you're expecting guitarists to play that pedal into a tube amp and many of those are ridiculously bright and therefore the baked in tone curve sits perfectly well there - possibly even sounds flat'ish, but bassists often work with equipment that's more flat in its response, especially in the treble - either by going directly into FOH, or by using modern bass cabs (with tweeters).
I'd say it would all be fine if the treble boost saw a +5dB increase.

I think the 5kHz roll-off likely has a lot to do with using a looper as the sound source. A lot of loopers have pretty aggressive LPF to filter out any aliasing. Zak's graphs (EQs set to noon) accurately represent what we see on our fancy spectrum analyzer. I'll post them again here for clarity:

 

[el murdoque]

I think the 5kHz roll-off likely has a lot to do with using a looper as the sound source. A lot of loopers have pretty aggressive LPF to filter out any aliasing. Zak's graphs (EQs set to noon) accurately represent what we see on our fancy spectrum analyzer. I'll post them again here for clarity:

I'd love to own such a fancy device!
But in defense of my janky hardware, here's the signal with no device attached:


It's an older plot, one of the first I've made - I've smoothed out the lines a bit since taking that, but I think it shows the white noise works up to 20kHz.

What IS interesting in your measurements is that there is more treble roll off with the gain at minimum vs. the gain at max.

I'm throwing this thesis into the ring:
What the good people at empress did not anticipate was that (at least some of) us bassists do prefer to use the Drive at REALLY low gain settings.

 

[dedpool1052]

So far, this is where I've ended up,

Focusing the harmonics/frequencies on the uppermost side gets me something similar to how I use my DA MBD-1/2.
On the MBD-1, I use the clean set to unity, filling out my lows and mids,then use the dirt to fill out the highs.
I know they're completely different pedals, but this approach got me to my destination.
Outside of varying degrees of gain/mix combos, this gets me a very favorable tone and texture.

 

[dedpool1052]

For context, a large portion of my basses are high-output, brighter, round wound strung basses.

 

[el murdoque]

 

[el murdoque]

Finally, the Becos FX TS8-JZ has arrived.
here's a real pic:


JZ is for Jordan Ziff, who is apparently a metal guitarist.
Just from the feature set, one could assume this is a bass pedal.

What do I have here? It's a mini Tube Screamer variant with extra knobs and switches.
Apart from the TS typical Drive/Level/Tone trio, there is a switch that lets you set clipping options.
Position 1 is regular silicon clipping.
Position 2 is asymmetrical silicon clipping.
Position 3 is red LED clipping.

The other switch is labeled 'Deep' and it feeds more low end to the clippers.
Then there are the two little red knobs. One does dry/wet mix.
The other is a tilt EQ, centered at 750Hz, and it only affects the dry signal.

It takes 9-18V, and you can not run it with an internal 9V battery, there's no room.

 

[el murdoque]

Impression after 5 mins of playing it:
It's a great pedal and I love it.

 

[warptheory]

Interested about this...

 

[el murdoque]

Damn this social life!
Apparently, this sunny day was way too nice to sit in the den and I had to go out for drinks, which delayed things.

Here's two super quick and rough samples:

One is with LED clipping, the other with the standard silicon.

 

[el murdoque]

Okay. Here's what I can say for a first impression.

There is some depth to the pedal, but it is not too complicated, but some of it is trial and error.
I'll have to measure things, but my guess is that the tone knob is some sort of standard passive treble control, turn it all the way up for 'neutral', turn it down to dampen the top.
The gain knob works like a TS. It passes signal at zero, and output volume does increase a little as you turn it up, just like the original.
The Deep switch is some sort of pre gain bass boost, or maybe it lowers the filter threshold at the clipping stage (if such a thing exists), but it certainly makes it sound bigger and weightier.

The true challenge is to balance the wet/dry mix, the dry EQ and the gain. There are no crazy interactions between the knobs and everything feels pretty linear, but it's three knobs, two of which are somewhat hard to fine tune with bassist fingers.
Basically, I'm currently working my way forward by setting one and then toying around with the two others to find a balance.
I am clearly leaning towards emphasis on the low end for the tilt EQ, but I'm running it closer to noon than I would have imagined.

 

[el murdoque]

Played completely wet, it sounds very much like a tube screamer, with the mids push and a somewhat thinned out low end, so it is more or less mandatory to make use of the blend function and pump in some undistorted lows.

I measured the pedal with all knobs at noon (only the blend knob set to completely wet), deep switch off and standard clipping diodes, and it even looks the part:

 

[tidbits]

Played completely wet, it sounds very much like a tube screamer, with the mids push and a somewhat thinned out low end, so it is more or less mandatory to make use of the blend function and pump in some undistorted lows.

I measured the pedal with all knobs at noon (only the blend knob set to completely wet), deep switch off and standard clipping diodes, and it even looks the part:
View attachment 7497911

Based on that graph, it's pretty nice that the tilt EQ for the dry is up at 750.

 

[GrowlerBox]

Based on that graph, it's pretty nice that the tilt EQ for the dry is up at 750.

Yes, but how do you make it tilt in both directions at once?

 

[el murdoque]

Yes, but how do you make it tilt in both directions at once?

You don't. What you do is taking the treble content from the wet side and rely on the dry side to bring the weight.

Here's another graph.
Dry EQ at 10 o'clock and mix between 1 and 2 o'clock:

 

[Zbysek]

I measured the pedal with all knobs at noon

Would it be possible to increase high mids (1-3 kHz) with the Tone control?