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My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

#901
Stellvia said:
I’m guessing Super Vintage? I run mine pretty clean at the end of my chain as my DI. I actually prefer the amp-like breakup of the Fake Plastic Trees to the SV but it still does a great overdriven amp tone on its own! I really love the cab sim on the SV too, makes my P bass sit beautifully in the mix!
Click to expand...

Yes, a Super Vintage is on its way.
I sold the '64 because while I liked it, the dirt it got me would only work in settings that I'm not really playing and the cab sim was too much damp blanket for my taste. I actually am in the market for a pedal that has a bit more beef since I joined the 80's metal band. I currently get my sound by using the Tonehammer as the last gain stage, but that is not a setup that would work well in a live setting. I don't want to send the amp EQ to FOH.
So I want to add something to the small board that could take care of that, and the Super Vintage could very well be the right choice here.
 
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#902
After Mr @johnk_10 posted a thread about it a year ago, I put it on my radar.

Now I finally found one.

IMG-20240523-WA0006.jpg
 
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#903
el murdoque said:
After Mr @johnk_10 posted a thread about it a year ago, I put it on my radar.

Now I finally found one.

View attachment 5456555
Click to expand...

Never remotely needed one of these, but have always wanted one. if just for the increasing-fist-size graphics alone. It's hilarious and awesome!

Hopefully the AT proves more awesome than hilarious when it comes to the tone ;)
 
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#908
s_wood said:
Great suggestions! Can you recommend some thing in that ballpark, but without the quirky HiWatt EQ stack?
Click to expand...
My experience is that the Fender-type passive tonestack is what gives the particular response to those amps based around them. You could probably cludge together similar tones using a parametric EQ before (or in-between) gain stages to simulate those mild EQ curves, though it comes much easier just using the original circuit (with the added benefit of those tonestacks generally being pretty mild across the entire sweep of the controls compared to a typical active tonestack). Play around with this tonestack calculator to get an idea: TSC in the web
 
#910
The Angry Troll is an interesting find. I think it makes the sound a bit more punchy and maybe even snappy, even when there is no audible dirt.
You can actually dial in something of a zero position. The right knob is a rotary switch, but there is one more position past the smallest fist.
I did not play long through the device, though.

The Postman was heavily burdened when he came up the front porch.
IMG-20240523-WA0012.jpg

This also arrived.

I need to sort my thoughts on it out and check out a lot more things, but up until now I wanna say I really like it. And (sheer blasphemy) I even think I like it more than the '64.
The '64 was easily able to bury me in options, with the two different amp emulations and different tone stacks for them, I kinda kept flipping switches and somewhat feeling lost.
The Super Vintage does not do that. One switch for the parametric mids and one for bass cut/flat/treble boost.
Three band EQ and a gain knob - plus the two knobs that can be used as a post-drive EQ, but only on the 1/4" out.
It's a lot easier to grasp. And while it certainly does ampeg things, it kind of does not completely sound like an SVT. I feel there are some differences. It was easy for me to dial in tones that sounded like a fat amp driven hard, I could find sounds that I could not on ampeg devices I owned. It is quite dynamic, and it can roar.
I tried the cab sim for a spell and while it did not blow me away, I think it will work fine with FOH.
The 8x10 imitation is a bit less inclined to reproduce treble than I personally would prefer. But I need to experiment with riding the treble knob higher and compensating on the 1/4" out with cutting a bit on the small knob, maybe that can brighten up the XLR out a bit without altering the tone too much, I'll have to look into that.

Setting the Super Vintage to the edge of breakup and then pushing it over by using the Angry Troll was fun, too. The small fist gain stages work very well for that.
 
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#912
Okay, back to the Way Huge Angry Troll.
The pedal is as simple as it can get. Volume sets your output volume and the "fist knob" selects between 6 gain settings. Setting one is clean, and from there it gets more dirty.
I will have to try it out in a mix, but so far I like the lower gain settings and especially like to use it in front of something else. You know, when you have a pedal set up that is not really dirty sounding at all, and then you use the Angry Troll, which by itself also only shows a few specks of dirt,
and when you fire one into the other, it's suddenly moto cross race on a rainy day.

This quickly led me to try the BDPG. This is a pedal that works great when you play dirt pedals into it - so using a pedal that likes to play into other pedals in combo with a pedal that likes to be played into seemed like a no brainer. And it totally worked!

One thing, though: Playing it today, I felt like it cuts off some of the top end of the signal.
 
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#914
Onwards to the Super Vintage.
Today, I focused on using the SV as a dirt pedal. I had it early in the chain and played around with it.
The controls feel a bit different when more sound shaping happens later in the chain, but it works very well in that regard. I ended up leaving the bass knob at noon, pushed the mids a little set at 1k and set treble to taste, with a little bass and treble boost on the little knobs.
I used my three basses with it. The Le Fay with the worn flats, the Bassline with fresh TI flats and the P bass with chromes. All worked well with the pedal, I wanna say it liked the P bass most, though.
In direct comparison, I could get a sound out of it that was shockingly similar to the Xotic BB Bass Preamp when I had the drive set to just a little past the edge of breakup and some treble boost going on. I run the gain and treble knob on the BB nearly maxed, and the SV can get there with ease and surpass both settings if desired.

In comparison to the '64, it feels like it yields the dirt more willingly and there is less of a push back. It also sounds completely different. Where the '64 goes towards a synthy fuzz when you crank it, the SV is more angled towards a smooth-ish distortion sound.

I will have to swap the SV with the Broughton Studio One on my small board to see if that gets me more towards a ballsy sound - by my current estimation it should be awesome.

As a drive pedal it is a highly versatile device with the pre gain tone controls with parametric mids plus post gain bass and treble knobs. This somehow got me what I hoped to find in the '64 - and the cab sim is actually usable.
 
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#917
Parzival said:
I had heard people say those 29 boxes were nothing more than overpriced buffers, but looking at it, it does appear to have tone shaping abilities.

Oops, imagine me looking and seeing this is not a Euna and that there are different 29 pedals.
Click to expand...

I've watched this video:
Which got me interested. The other boxes, to my ear, do something I like. Like a little added brilliance or presence.

However, using the 29 in my setup means I get a low gain OD. You have those options for shaping the gain stage and selecting the clipping diodes on the three switches. I quite like the Idea of having those tiny knobs that are not even protruding much from the surface, so you can carefully set it and be confident that those settings stay. However, I would have wished for a small white marker to see the knob position.

If I use the minimal settings ( 3 | B | 0 ), with the gain knob dimed I just get some flavor to the sound, but not much audible dirt to speak of. Even running higher settings will not yield a Fuzzy tone, it firmly stays in overdrive. I guess that my flats are not feeding it much to work with in terms of overtones and on top of that, my bass does not have a very strong output.

Same as the Angry Troll, I noticed a certain lack of top end when I played through it, placing it a bit more on the darker side of drives. I was wandering if my ears were to blame, but since @dedpool1052 confirmed my suspicion with the AT, it might actually be that my ears are not to blame after all.

I want to say again that the pedal has a stunning beauty to it. I really dig the aesthetics.
The Whatever plug at the end that will accept 7,5-35 Volts in either polarity, AC or DC is a cool feature.
However, the input and output jacks are too close to each other. I can't use Hicon Pancake Jacks on both of these.
 
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#918
...funny how these things turn out.
I was quite sure that I will not like the Origin Super Vintage, because I'm not too keen on the Ampeg tone stack.

And I also thought I would love the FLWR because I like the color, the looks, the concept and the form factor (and the YT demo).

With the Angry Troll, it was a must buy because a person like @johnk_10 liked his enough to create a thread here to praise it.

And now I sit here, already contemplating letting the other pedals go, but really falling for the Super Vintage. Right now, I'd say that one surely is a keeper.
 
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#919
el murdoque said:
Same as the Angry Troll, I noticed a certain lack of top end when I played through it, placing it a bit more on the darker side of drives. I was wandering if my ears were to blame, but since @dedpool1052 confirmed my suspicion with the AT, it might actually be that my ears are not to blame after all.
Click to expand...
I should add a caveat.
As the "fist" level got higher, the high-end increased.
However, once it reached my desired level of highs, the breakup was incredibly buzzy and unfavorable.
 
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#920
Read this whole thread, cover to cover, over a few days. Extraordinary.

Has anyone here tried the Templo Devices Reel Deal or Reel Dealuxe? Given the love for the JPTR Jive, I thought there might be some interest. Almost nothing on TB (one or two sidebar mentions is all I could track down). Essentially zero bass demos on YouTube; it features on a JHS show, and is used on bass in one jam (no actual bassists in sight on that show, however much I enjoy it).

It is claimed on the product website that it is a faithful reproduction of the preamp from a vintage Revox reel-to-reel tape recorder. I’ve never knowingly heard one of those, so I’m in no position offer an opinion regarding that claim, but the guitar demos sound pretty interesting. It seems more like a fuzz-distortion than an overdrive to me (no bad thing in itself), but with a pretty broad range of breakup and gated sounds.

It’s pretty inexpensive right now, even with shipping to the opposite end of the earth from the Canagiun jungles, so I might eventually just take a punt, but if anyone has tried it, I’d be grateful for comment.

In the meantime, I have a Hudson Broadcast 24V jobbie on its way, as a part of my transformer-based effects kick, which will keep my itch scratched for a little while, I hope.
 
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