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My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal
- Thread starter el murdoque
- Start date
I wanted to be more impressed by the demo that was released today. I was all set to buy it, but holding off for now. Not sure how easy it would be to pass it on afterwards if I didn't like it.
Me too. And it’s pretty expensive. Hopefully there will be a better demo. Or maybe it isn’t for me.
I managed to shave a few precious moments from my busy schedule to retire to the bass chamber and do a bit of playing - but just enough to get first impressions.
1. Redstone.
This felt a bit like a crowbar to the teeth.
I had this pedal all figured out in my mind, and then it did not do as I thought.
Having pieced together that the company that made the Saturn VI, the dirty boost / light drive that made it onto my pedalboard after spiraling my way upwards (and occasionally downwards) through so many dirt pedals, the one I cant praise high enough has made another pedal that uses a tonestack I really love. But they did change that tonestack a bit, the dip it usually has around 600Hz that is the one weak spot IMHO, has been bumped up by 6dB. So it surely must be the most stellar thing out there for my kind of application.
Well, I plugged it in, set the dials in a way that I estimated to be close to perfection and I got .. . nothing that pleased my ear. In a word, the drive sounded totally artificial. Like a lump of alien interference attached to my beautiful dry signal. I twisted knobs some more, but could not make it good. I took out the trusty ol' HWUA for a direct comparison, maybe the early spot in the chain was wrong for that kind of pedal - but the results were even more sobering: The HWUA delivered as expected. A rich and organic texture of dynamic drive, beautifully shaped by the Alembic/Fender tonestack, full of tube warmth and goodness.
I will approach the Redstone from other angles as soon as I can, but right now, I'm thinking that I'll return it, and soon.
1. CMC Prototype:
With all the dials set to noon, I plugged it in, set the volume for unity and instantly had something on my hands (and ears) that worked. I started twisting knobs but quickly figured out that this is not your average dirt pedal.
Here's what I think they do:
Level and Drive are standard. You set your output and your desired amount of dirt.
It needs to be said that drive is really dynamic. You can go from completely clean to solid wall of dirt by playing technique alone. It is not as fine and precise as the Origin was, but it is easily enough to call it pretty dynamic.
Now we have four knobs left. One is a treble knob. Shelving EQ, I think. Making an educated guess, I'd say that this is post drive.
One knob is named low cut, and I think it affects how much low frequency you feed into the drive circuit, while clean lows are still passing through. Depending on how you set the drive and rest of the EQ, you can get a drive sound that sounds a little weak on the low end, but I assume that is not because it cuts lows, but rather because it pushes high mids and makes your signal sound much louder.
The remaining two are contour and nose. The latter feeds that frequency between high mids and treble, which gives the drive a different voice and presence in the mix, the former does things that I cannot really fathom, I'll have to read up on this.
It's a bit surprising that there is no dry/wet mix knob, but the dry blend is a fixed value - which works a lot better than one might assume. Either pure luck would have it that in my particular setting the blend happens to be at the exact spot I would set it or solid engineering has set it so it will sound like that all of the time, regardless of setup used. There is always enough dry so it does not starve anything, but it never feels like dry and wet make up two voices that are blended, it always sounds like only one thing.
Quickly hopping through different settings, I realized that this covers a lot of ground and there is not one sweet spot, but many useful sounds can be harvested from this pedal.
I will have to go into this in greater detail, but after only a few minutes spent with it, I firmly think that this needs more attention from you fellow cork sniffers. It does things differently and this new approach feels fresh and feels like it totally works!
1. Redstone.
This felt a bit like a crowbar to the teeth.
I had this pedal all figured out in my mind, and then it did not do as I thought.
Having pieced together that the company that made the Saturn VI, the dirty boost / light drive that made it onto my pedalboard after spiraling my way upwards (and occasionally downwards) through so many dirt pedals, the one I cant praise high enough has made another pedal that uses a tonestack I really love. But they did change that tonestack a bit, the dip it usually has around 600Hz that is the one weak spot IMHO, has been bumped up by 6dB. So it surely must be the most stellar thing out there for my kind of application.
Well, I plugged it in, set the dials in a way that I estimated to be close to perfection and I got .. . nothing that pleased my ear. In a word, the drive sounded totally artificial. Like a lump of alien interference attached to my beautiful dry signal. I twisted knobs some more, but could not make it good. I took out the trusty ol' HWUA for a direct comparison, maybe the early spot in the chain was wrong for that kind of pedal - but the results were even more sobering: The HWUA delivered as expected. A rich and organic texture of dynamic drive, beautifully shaped by the Alembic/Fender tonestack, full of tube warmth and goodness.
I will approach the Redstone from other angles as soon as I can, but right now, I'm thinking that I'll return it, and soon.
1. CMC Prototype:
With all the dials set to noon, I plugged it in, set the volume for unity and instantly had something on my hands (and ears) that worked. I started twisting knobs but quickly figured out that this is not your average dirt pedal.
Here's what I think they do:
Level and Drive are standard. You set your output and your desired amount of dirt.
It needs to be said that drive is really dynamic. You can go from completely clean to solid wall of dirt by playing technique alone. It is not as fine and precise as the Origin was, but it is easily enough to call it pretty dynamic.
Now we have four knobs left. One is a treble knob. Shelving EQ, I think. Making an educated guess, I'd say that this is post drive.
One knob is named low cut, and I think it affects how much low frequency you feed into the drive circuit, while clean lows are still passing through. Depending on how you set the drive and rest of the EQ, you can get a drive sound that sounds a little weak on the low end, but I assume that is not because it cuts lows, but rather because it pushes high mids and makes your signal sound much louder.
The remaining two are contour and nose. The latter feeds that frequency between high mids and treble, which gives the drive a different voice and presence in the mix, the former does things that I cannot really fathom, I'll have to read up on this.
It's a bit surprising that there is no dry/wet mix knob, but the dry blend is a fixed value - which works a lot better than one might assume. Either pure luck would have it that in my particular setting the blend happens to be at the exact spot I would set it or solid engineering has set it so it will sound like that all of the time, regardless of setup used. There is always enough dry so it does not starve anything, but it never feels like dry and wet make up two voices that are blended, it always sounds like only one thing.
Quickly hopping through different settings, I realized that this covers a lot of ground and there is not one sweet spot, but many useful sounds can be harvested from this pedal.
I will have to go into this in greater detail, but after only a few minutes spent with it, I firmly think that this needs more attention from you fellow cork sniffers. It does things differently and this new approach feels fresh and feels like it totally works!
Is it that Ground & Pound pedal that should imitate Justin Chancellor's tone?
Interesting read, but I must admit that while I enjoy listening to tool, I never craved to replicate Chansellor's sounds.
I've used it in both spots. The preamp duty on my board has been taken over by the Noble, though.
I had the UA as the dirt pedal for the sparkly and creamy, rich texture solo sound thing, but then I started getting those weird problems and I must admit that I totally forgot to get it fixed with the Sushi mod, but that has reappeared on my list as soon as I had it plugged in and played a few notes.
I like it best when it sits later in the chain and sees some raised signal levels, it does not excel with a signal straight from a passive bass.
The redstone takes some time.
With the bass and treble all the way off, the mid control sort of acts as a second gain control, so it doesn't fully behave like the usual FMV tone stack.
Yes, it takes some experimenting, but you also have to realize the EQ is pre gain (more bass, more compressed, fuzzy character)
And isn't quite as "plug'n'play" as the Saturn VI.
The one thing I don't really get is that part about the bass and treble at zero where the mids act as another gain.
I made a quick graph with the tone stack calculator set to Fender tonestack.
Bass and treble at zero, mids at 1, 5 and 10:
I'd say this means with bass and treble at zero, the mids act as a kind of second gain, and fail to grasp the difference between Fender and Spaceman.
I am by no means finished with the pedal, but I have to admit that I did not like the character of the dirt one bit from that early bit of testing.
One thing I noticed with the Redstone compared to the Saturn, wrt dirt, is that the Saturn has a far more natural sounding decay on the break-up, vs the Redstone, which tends to fall off pretty quickly.
One approach I'd suggest, which sounds weird, but roll off all the EQ, then use just the volume and gain. Try cranking gain, and setting volume to unity.
What I notice when I compare Redstone and Saturn, is that the Saturn makes the notes bloom with that organic flavor, and using my worn flats, it brings in those harmonics that create some natural feeling treble content in my signal. The attack is as it should be and the low gain drive sounds are among the best I ever experienced in my personal setup.
The Redstone reminds me of an old Carlsbro combo amp I owned for a while. When I bought it, I got it for five bucks because it was listed as "broken" without further explanation. I hoped that either speaker or amp was dead and that I could scavenge the half that was still working. Plugging it in at home revealed that the amp did fine, but the speaker added a lot of noise at higher levels. It turned out that the tolex that was folded inside the vent had come loose and whenever there was air being pushed around, the flap of tolex in the vent would vibrate in the breeze.
A single cut with a sharp knife repaired that amp - but before that, it sounded a bit like the Redstone.
With the gain cranked and everything else at zero, I get a sound that is not unpleasant, but it's clean. When I raise the mids to about noon, I start getting dirt, and around one o'clock, it drastically changes flavor from just a hint of dirt to full-on slurry pump. However, my ear perceives this not as a part of the tone, but rather like that tolex flap inside the cabinet's vent. I can't help it. It sounds a bit muffled - but there is a treble knob sitting at zero, so I raise that a bit, but it seems to amplify all the wrong stuff and the sound gets more unpleasant.
This simply was not meant for me. The Saturn VI is one of those pedals that I bought without hesitation after trying one out for a bit, and where my current mental horizon is not capable of encompassing the event of ever letting go of it.
The Redstone surely can do useful, maybe even beautiful sounds - on other people's pedalboards.
Totally understand.
I can get some useful tone from the Redstone, I much prefer the response from the Saturn, for reasons you described.
If it's not meant to be, it's not meant to be.
It's always disheartening when a pedal you look forward to, underwhelms you.
But, I suppose it's part of the journey.
Agreed. Although, I expect this is one of the main reasons that we swoon so hard when we finally *do* find that pedal we're looking for!
I'm kind of wondering here and there what I'm doing here. On my board I have the combo of Saturn VI and Jive, that give me a luxurious choice of dirt sounds that are easy on the ear and work well with what I currently do.
On top of that, I have an ever growing collection of formidable dirt pedals that can cover a lot of scenarios.
The last time I checked, I had about half a dozen sitting around unused that I am absolutely unable to part with.
However, to get over the underwhelming experience, I just bought a Hamstead Subspace.
I think I'll look at these for a while. Sleek and modern looking ones with lots of options.
On the list:
Chase Bliss Brothers
Jackson Audio .... is there one of the MIDI capable ones that works for bass? The Golden Boy maybe?
On top of that, I have an ever growing collection of formidable dirt pedals that can cover a lot of scenarios.
The last time I checked, I had about half a dozen sitting around unused that I am absolutely unable to part with.
However, to get over the underwhelming experience, I just bought a Hamstead Subspace.
I think I'll look at these for a while. Sleek and modern looking ones with lots of options.
On the list:
Chase Bliss Brothers
Jackson Audio .... is there one of the MIDI capable ones that works for bass? The Golden Boy maybe?
Strymon riverside and sunset both work for bass. Might not work for everyone, but they do work, and have midi.
A bit more on the CMC Proto Type:
Let me give you a rundown of the knobs and how I experienced them.
First of all, I should paint a map of the signal path.
The signal gets split upon entering the pedal. One part remains dry and untouched, the other part gets processed by "nose" "contour" and "low cut", then enters the bit that does the drive. Those two get mixed again. You have no control over how much dry/wet is blended - but CMC chose the sweet spot perfectly. After that, the blended signal passes the "treble" knob.
1. The switch. It is a soft touch switch, but my unit sends a little plop sound when it engages down the signal path. It is on my messy test bench setup, though. It could well be that this has to do with it, the test bench is always a bit noisier than my real board. However, this switch can do a trick. When you click it, it turns the pedal on. Click it again and it turns off. Press and hold, however, and the pedal stays on for as long as you press and disengages upon release. I can see use cases for that.
2. Level. Nothing to report here. It's a level knob.
3. Drive. The gain knob. With my passive bass that does not have an incredibly high output everything stays fairly clean until we reach about 10 o'clock when harder playing creates a bit of fluff around the edges. Goes all the way up to solid overdrive.
4. Treble. It is a shelving EQ that can cut and boost, noon is flat. The treble knob comes after clean and dirty signal have been blended, so it influences the overall output. It is not a knob to add magic sparkle, but it can make up for some loss of treble if you send it a dull signal - and it can take a bit off of the top, so you can run higher drive settings, but don't have too much harshness in the tone.
5. Contour. It's a cut only EQ with a broad Q, centered around 400Hz. Fully CCW is flat. So one could say that turning it up creates a bathtub EQ. That what it feels like. I want to play around with that in a band setting, but I already liked it running flat.
6. Nose. This is the opposite of Contour. It is a boost only EQ with a narrow Q, somewhere in the 1kHz region.
This adds bite. But it's not the clanky, gnarly growly Darkglass bite. It's just bite. You still recognize the timbre and character of the bass you play into the Proto Type, only that it has grown bigger and pointier teeth.
7. Low Cut. This does as advertised It's a high pass filter that goes from zero to around 300Hz - but it only cuts signal going into the drive section, not the dry path, so while you lose distorted lows, you don't lose lows in general.
Are these controls highly interactive? Good lord, no! That would be way too much to comprehend. Every single knob is finely tuned so turning it gives you a feeling of linear behavior - and I want to add that it feels linear, because that's what your ears tell you. I imagine that takes some work. Of course there is interaction between the knobs, but it's neither rocket science nor necromancy. You don't need safety goggles, white lab coat and clipboard. You don't need the black silk robe, the summoning circle and the still beating heart of a goat.
You just give the knob a twist and use your ear. It'll give you a pretty accurate idea of what's happening and how this will influence the total outcome.
As an example, I wanted to set the pedal to get myself a slight, touch responsive drive sound that gets my bass more presence and more treble content (as I never get tired of mentioning, I play dead flats). So I set the Drive around noon, level to unity, countour at zero, and gave it a bit of Treble as well as a bit of Nose - then I plucked a string and already got a result that was close to what I had in my head. A little fine tuning on the gain and the ratio of nose/treble and I was there. The clipping stage in the Proto Type is CMOS. I only knew these things from my PC, but as the engineer says: "Every machine is a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough". I suppose that everything that can pass a signal is an overdrive if the signal you pass in is hot enough, so even the thing that holds the BIOS on your computer can make your bass growl.
The character of the drive is transparent, it only accentuates here and there but keeps the vibe intact.
The low cut works pretty well, too! I've set everything nicely and ran into the problem that when the middle of the fretboard frequency range starts to sing, the lows get distorted too much - just turn up the low cut until you reach the desired result.
Let me give you a rundown of the knobs and how I experienced them.
First of all, I should paint a map of the signal path.
The signal gets split upon entering the pedal. One part remains dry and untouched, the other part gets processed by "nose" "contour" and "low cut", then enters the bit that does the drive. Those two get mixed again. You have no control over how much dry/wet is blended - but CMC chose the sweet spot perfectly. After that, the blended signal passes the "treble" knob.
1. The switch. It is a soft touch switch, but my unit sends a little plop sound when it engages down the signal path. It is on my messy test bench setup, though. It could well be that this has to do with it, the test bench is always a bit noisier than my real board. However, this switch can do a trick. When you click it, it turns the pedal on. Click it again and it turns off. Press and hold, however, and the pedal stays on for as long as you press and disengages upon release. I can see use cases for that.
2. Level. Nothing to report here. It's a level knob.
3. Drive. The gain knob. With my passive bass that does not have an incredibly high output everything stays fairly clean until we reach about 10 o'clock when harder playing creates a bit of fluff around the edges. Goes all the way up to solid overdrive.
4. Treble. It is a shelving EQ that can cut and boost, noon is flat. The treble knob comes after clean and dirty signal have been blended, so it influences the overall output. It is not a knob to add magic sparkle, but it can make up for some loss of treble if you send it a dull signal - and it can take a bit off of the top, so you can run higher drive settings, but don't have too much harshness in the tone.
5. Contour. It's a cut only EQ with a broad Q, centered around 400Hz. Fully CCW is flat. So one could say that turning it up creates a bathtub EQ. That what it feels like. I want to play around with that in a band setting, but I already liked it running flat.
6. Nose. This is the opposite of Contour. It is a boost only EQ with a narrow Q, somewhere in the 1kHz region.
This adds bite. But it's not the clanky, gnarly growly Darkglass bite. It's just bite. You still recognize the timbre and character of the bass you play into the Proto Type, only that it has grown bigger and pointier teeth.
7. Low Cut. This does as advertised It's a high pass filter that goes from zero to around 300Hz - but it only cuts signal going into the drive section, not the dry path, so while you lose distorted lows, you don't lose lows in general.
Are these controls highly interactive? Good lord, no! That would be way too much to comprehend. Every single knob is finely tuned so turning it gives you a feeling of linear behavior - and I want to add that it feels linear, because that's what your ears tell you. I imagine that takes some work. Of course there is interaction between the knobs, but it's neither rocket science nor necromancy. You don't need safety goggles, white lab coat and clipboard. You don't need the black silk robe, the summoning circle and the still beating heart of a goat.
You just give the knob a twist and use your ear. It'll give you a pretty accurate idea of what's happening and how this will influence the total outcome.
As an example, I wanted to set the pedal to get myself a slight, touch responsive drive sound that gets my bass more presence and more treble content (as I never get tired of mentioning, I play dead flats). So I set the Drive around noon, level to unity, countour at zero, and gave it a bit of Treble as well as a bit of Nose - then I plucked a string and already got a result that was close to what I had in my head. A little fine tuning on the gain and the ratio of nose/treble and I was there. The clipping stage in the Proto Type is CMOS. I only knew these things from my PC, but as the engineer says: "Every machine is a smoke machine if you operate it wrong enough". I suppose that everything that can pass a signal is an overdrive if the signal you pass in is hot enough, so even the thing that holds the BIOS on your computer can make your bass growl.
The character of the drive is transparent, it only accentuates here and there but keeps the vibe intact.
The low cut works pretty well, too! I've set everything nicely and ran into the problem that when the middle of the fretboard frequency range starts to sing, the lows get distorted too much - just turn up the low cut until you reach the desired result.
Hey Murdoque, it's funny I feel you are really getting why and how I built this pedal and why the controls happend, very cool to read
Not a MIDI pedal, but the Belle Starr is a nice one on bass
Curious about dimensions on the CMC Proto Type. I can fit a standard pedal width pedal on my board, but not a mil wider than that. Looks up my alley.
