My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[el murdoque]

Thanks, must have missed that. If it is similar to the Barbershop, I’ll pass and go for Saturn VI instead - I already have a Barbershop v2 that I like a lot, would like to find a Modèle B.

Speaking of planets, after writing the previous message I visited JPTR FX homepage, checked the Jive, added it in the shopping cart and just out of curiosity clicked on checkout, just to check the shipping cost.

My jaw dropped. So I did what I had to.

No, it is not at all similar, it was just that I felt the Barbershop did more for me and my personal setup.
If memory serves, the breakup of the Locomotive ... let me put it like this:
Take a big, sooty cauldron (the one witches use) and fill it with gravel, now ask someone very big and very strong (let's say Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson had a bigger, stronger brother) to pick it up and give it a shake.
In that scenario, the Barbershop is the sound that thing makes when it is filled with fine gravel the stuff used in road construction, while the Locomotive sounds more like the small stones that you find below train tracks.
Does that make any sense?

The Jive was too cheap to pass up?

 

[Derek Williams]

The Jive was too cheap to pass up?

With the 20% off sale they have going on right now, I bought a second one to get the new finish. With the low cost of that pedal (and the cheap shipping) everyone should buy one.

 

[el murdoque]

With the 20% off sale they have going on right now, I bought a second one to get the new finish. With the low cost of that pedal (and the cheap shipping) everyone should buy one.

Ah okay. I have a Jive and unfortunately zero interest in any of their other offerings, so I don't really follow what's going on there. I'd still be interested in a Mini Jive - but not the version they released. Instead, one with Gain and Volume knobs, minus the switches.

 

[Charlie Tuna]

Ah okay. I have a Jive and unfortunately zero interest in any of their other offerings, so I don't really follow what's going on there. I'd still be interested in a Mini Jive - but not the version they released. Instead, one with Gain and Volume knobs, minus the switches.

But then you get side jacks. :-/

 

[davelowell2]

Ah okay. I have a Jive and unfortunately zero interest in any of their other offerings, so I don't really follow what's going on there. I'd still be interested in a Mini Jive - but not the version they released. Instead, one with Gain and Volume knobs, minus the switches.

Then you’ll have a SHO with gain. You can diy that.

 

[el murdoque]

Then you’ll have a SHO with gain. You can diy that.

You grossly overestimate my diy capabilities!

In a best case scenario, I'd get a death metal fuzz.

In a worst case scenario, I'd suffocate on the magic smoke that gets released from half of my gear in one giant poof.

 

[MattiZ]

No, it is not at all similar, it was just that I felt the Barbershop did more for me and my personal setup.
If memory serves, the breakup of the Locomotive ... let me put it like this:
Take a big, sooty cauldron (the one witches use) and fill it with gravel, now ask someone very big and very strong (let's say Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson had a bigger, stronger brother) to pick it up and give it a shake.
In that scenario, the Barbershop is the sound that thing makes when it is filled with fine gravel the stuff used in road construction, while the Locomotive sounds more like the small stones that you find below train tracks.
Does that make any sense?

The Jive was too cheap to pass up?

Damn. That didn’t help. Now I kind of want one anyway. The kind of rocks that have very sharp and cutting edges, rough but bright?

I paid 111,38€ including international shipping. So, more than 20% off.

 

[Stellvia]

Ok, Jive ordered here as well! €97 for me including shipping.

 

[Zbysek]

For example: Hey, el_murdoque, could you please dime all the knobs on the Fake Plastic Trees?

Sure, here you go!

That’s wild…

 

[arepa_funk]

Hey @el murdoque, not sure if I missed your assessment of the Beta V? I play with flats on all my four and five string basses and finding a preamp/OD that doesn't fart out on fivers or get too dark has been a challenge.

I'm using many things now to get there or close to there:
Analog Alien Bass Station
SV-PRE
Barber Linden
Sushi Box Particle Accelerator
Way Huge Pork & Pickle
Quilter Interbass, love the tone and vintage cab sim here.
Wren & Cuff Phat Phuk B

Hope your search has been fruitful!

 

[RestlessBoom]

Damn. That didn’t help. Now I kind of want one anyway. The kind of rocks that have very sharp and cutting edges, rough but bright?

I paid 111,38€ including international shipping. So, more than 20% off.

I just got a Locomotive from another TB user, and it sounds fantastic running into my Noble. I loved the tone of the Noble by itself, but it doesn’t do grit and I wanted a touch more mids. Now it’s just about perfect.

 

[el murdoque]

Hey @el murdoque, not sure if I missed your assessment of the Beta V? I play with flats on all my four and five string basses and finding a preamp/OD that doesn't fart out on fivers or get too dark has been a challenge.

I'm using many things now to get there or close to there:
Analog Alien Bass Station
SV-PRE
Barber Linden
Sushi Box Particle Accelerator
Way Huge Pork & Pickle
Quilter Interbass, love the tone and vintage cab sim here.
Wren & Cuff Phat Phuk B

Hope your search has been fruitful!

I have not reviewed the Beta yet. It is quite a bit more complex than I thought it would be and I've been busy toying around with the second board setup to really give the Beta a proper workout, but so far, I'm liking it. It seems a bit more capable than the standard betas and it's not as weird as the Beta DLX, the tone is, I think, a bit more grindy and a bit less fizzy, but I'll come to that in length pretty soon.

 

[JRMK]

Not a particular product related but for flats to not fart out I found anything with tilt EQ helps much

 

[sunbeast]

Not a particular product related but for flats to not fart out I found anything with tilt EQ helps much

What are a few tilt EQ-able drives you can add? I actually have been using the tilt-EQ of my Ovnilabs Smoothie in this way in front of a Mesa Walkabout amp to sculpt its character (including a very light preamp overdrive) to great effect in a band I’ve been playing in lately (I only use the Smoothie and a tuner, which is the least FX I’ve used in a group for several years!). I could see a light drive with a tilt-EQ potentially suiting my case really well as an alternative to the Smoothie

 

[arepa_funk]

I have not reviewed the Beta yet. It is quite a bit more complex than I thought it would be and I've been busy toying around with the second board setup to really give the Beta a proper workout, but so far, I'm liking it. It seems a bit more capable than the standard betas and it's not as weird as the Beta DLX, the tone is, I think, a bit more grindy and a bit less fizzy, but I'll come to that in length pretty soon.

Thank you! Been curious about the whole Beta series for a year while.

Agreed, the Smoothie comp's tilt EQ is crucial to getting fives sounding right. I've been using the Cali76-CB more lately bc of the HPF but I may go back to try Smoothie in a few chains.

 

[el murdoque]

Just throwing this in from the side, but if you ever run across a Fuzzrocious BDPG,
buy it immediately (at any price) and thank me later.

There's a tilt EQ right there - and that thing is so beefed up that you'll move between 10 and 2 o'clock and never venture further.

It's a weird little pedal on its own, not without use(!), but in combo with any other dirt pedal you get something completely different. Take any given mediocre overdrive pedal. Play it into the BDPG and I'll guarantee that you will get a beefy, fat and juicy tone that sits perfectly with stoner/desert rock out of it. And there will be more.

 

[el murdoque]

A first, small impression on the Beta:

I have a somewhat limited experience with the Beta MKII and some serious experience with the Beta DLX.

While the Beta MkII had a switchable 'Preamp mode' the Beta V has Bass Preamp written on the face side, plain to see for everyone.
Has anyone ever tried to understand their naming conventions? Is the V meant to be the roman 5 ?
As I understood, the Beta was followed by the Beta Mk II and the Beta DLX only was a short run wedged between those.
Any Idea where Beta III and Beta IV are?

The controls are what I am used to when it concerns SolidGold FX:
Pretty straight forward, plus something to scratch your head.
I remember the toggle switches on the DLX where mids and bass had boost/flat/cut, but the switch positions were not the same, which was super weird.
Super weird on the Beta V is the switch in the middle. It's labeled 1/0/2.
Looking in the Manual, you get to know why. It works in tandem with the LPF knob. The LPF knob controls the cutoff frequency of the LPF. The three way toggle switch controls ... the cutoff frequency of the LPF. Wait what?
Okay, apparently the knob does more. Position 1 provides a mid bump, position 2 provides a mid scoop and position 0 cuts the hpf bit out of the circuit.
Apart from that bit, there's Presence and Body, which are fancy names for bass and treble - it's an active two band EQ that sits post clipping, and of course your gain and volume knobs.

This Beta is the first that is not necessarily dark. You can easily achieve a big sound by boosting the body, but in a mix this can get muddy quickly, so use with caution - a little goes a long way.
The post drive treble control is what all the betas in the past lacked IMO. You can really breathe back some life into your dead flats, and I have the feeling that the LPF thing is located in front of the EQ thing, so that knob also negates the feeling of a wet blanket over your cabinet that the LPF usually does.

I always liked what the Betas did, but I felt it hard to swallow the claim of them emulating vintage tube gear.
They sounded like solid state drive pedals to me, with a darker nature than most.
The Beta makes a giant leap towards the world of pedals-that-sound-and-feel-like-tube-amps.

 

[el murdoque]

Do you sometimes get weird cravings? Like you're sitting in a room and all is fine and suddenly you just HAVE to have spaghetti bolo, or a snickers, or whatever ?
I was standing around, playing stupid pop songs on my Ubass to annoy (and entertain) the SO. In German, there is a term called "Ohrwurm" which translates to ear worm. It describes a catchy tone that gets stuck in your head and you cannot get rid of it for some time. I was trying to wedge as many ear worms into her as I could possibly fit, when I was suddenly overcome by the urge to play 90's Swedish Doom Metal.
You might know how good I am at resisting temptation, so I swapped the Ubass for a full grown one and sat down to make some noise.

A bit of experimentation got me not even close to the tone I wanted - I was feeding the Wampler Pantheon Deluxe into the Fuzzrocious BDPG at that time. If you go for a fat&grindy sound that sits well with stoner/sludge/doom, try feeding dirt into the BDPG. It gets you places.
However, with the Wampler, I was not feeling it. The sweet spots on either side of the pedal were using less gain than I needed and even combining them did not work out as I would have liked.
At that point, I kicked in the Fake Plastic Trees.

Holy Cow.
Imagine a super mean and spluttery fuzz. Now take off some of the searing top end and add so much booty it's hard to believe. I knew you could make fuzz circuits sound totally kaputt. But usually, when you maim and mangle this hard, the low end suffers a great deal. The FPT somehow gets both done in a pleasant way.
It kind of feels like a very friendly face melting sound, and your bottom end does not drop out one bit.

While most pedals at these settings sound like you're doing something quite brutal, something that requires white face paint, a pentagram necklace and black leather, the FPT sounds like it actually likes it and could even take a lot more.


Honestly, if you're experimenting with bass sounds, get this pedal.

If dirt is not really your thing, get this pedal nonetheless (If dirt is not your thing, how did you end up on page 34 of a thread that is entirely about dirt [with the odd side of Philosophy tossed in by @sloppy_phil ).

If dirt totally is your thing, get this pedal.

And if you're not sure how you rank on the dirt-totally-is-my-thing scale, don't worry - after getting this pedal you will have to reevaluate anyway, so don't think about it too much and get this pedal.

 

[Charlie Tuna]

Do you sometimes get weird cravings? Like you're sitting in a room and all is fine and suddenly you just HAVE to have spaghetti bolo, or a snickers, or whatever ?
I was standing around, playing stupid pop songs on my Ubass to annoy (and entertain) the SO. In German, there is a term called "Ohrwurm" which translates to ear worm. It describes a catchy tone that gets stuck in your head and you cannot get rid of it for some time. I was trying to wedge as many ear worms into her as I could possibly fit, when I was suddenly overcome by the urge to play 90's Swedish Doom Metal.
You might know how good I am at resisting temptation, so I swapped the Ubass for a full grown one and sat down to make some noise.

A bit of experimentation got me not even close to the tone I wanted - I was feeding the Wampler Pantheon Deluxe into the Fuzzrocious BDPG at that time. If you go for a fat&grindy sound that sits well with stoner/sludge/doom, try feeding dirt into the BDPG. It gets you places.
However, with the Wampler, I was not feeling it. The sweet spots on either side of the pedal were using less gain than I needed and even combining them did not work out as I would have liked.
At that point, I kicked in the Fake Plastic Trees.

Holy Cow.
Imagine a super mean and spluttery fuzz. Now take off some of the searing top end and add so much booty it's hard to believe. I knew you could make fuzz circuits sound totally kaputt. But usually, when you maim and mangle this hard, the low end suffers a great deal. The FPT somehow gets both done in a pleasant way.
It kind of feels like a very friendly face melting sound, and your bottom end does not drop out one bit.

While most pedals at these settings sound like you're doing something quite brutal, something that requires white face paint, a pentagram necklace and black leather, the FPT sounds like it actually likes it and could even take a lot more.


Honestly, if you're experimenting with bass sounds, get this pedal.

If dirt is not really your thing, get this pedal nonetheless (If dirt is not your thing, how did you end up on page 34 of a thread that is entirely about dirt [with the odd side of Philosophy tossed in by @sloppy_phil ).

If dirt totally is your thing, get this pedal.

And if you're not sure how you rank on the dirt-totally-is-my-thing scale, don't worry - after getting this pedal you will have to reevaluate anyway, so don't think about it too much and get this pedal.

I concur. I still wake up in cold sweats ever since sending the FPT back to you.

 

[sloppy_phil]

Holy Cow.
Imagine a super mean and spluttery fuzz. Now take off some of the searing top end and add so much booty it's hard to believe. I knew you could make fuzz circuits sound totally kaputt. But usually, when you maim and mangle this hard, the low end suffers a great deal. The FPT somehow gets both done in a pleasant way.
It kind of feels like a very friendly face melting sound, and your bottom end does not drop out one bit.

While most pedals at these settings sound like you're doing something quite brutal, something that requires white face paint, a pentagram necklace and black leather, the FPT sounds like it actually likes it and could even take a lot more.

Pretty sure the reason I'm here is for these wonderfully colourful descriptions of tone. I have no idea what any of this is supposed to sound like (I'll confess a general ignorance with 90's Swedish Death Metal. Shocking, I know!), but I do know reading about it tends to make me smile and laugh.

Hey, I'm not just here for half-baked philosophy, either. I got most of a page, and a couple frequency response graphs, out of you (and then an entire subsequent panegyric!) with regards to the Wampler Belle/Nobels ODR circuits. I'm an honest-to-goodness contributor, thank you very much!

In the spirit of which, I've got a little sonic snapshot of my favourite dirt pedal to share with the team. It's my old little custom jobber; A Farewell to Cleans. It was originally a MXR Zakk Wylde overdrive I got back in 2008, which I had re-housed a few years later, so there could be a separate dry signal knob added in. It's not a blend, just a knob for a parallel clean channel, which can be turned up beyond unity gain. None of the fancy low-passing made de rigeur by companies like Damnation, 3Leaf, Broughton etc, just some old-fashioned full-range clean signal! I realize all this makes the name 'A Farewell to Cleans' something of a misnomer. But if anybody else has any Rush-based distortion puns I can use instead, I've yet to hear them...