My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[el murdoque]

Can't wait to hear your latest go 'round with this beauty, @el murdoque!

Sometimes you've just gotta give things in life another chance

Okay, faulty prediction. In my last post I said this post would contain a yellow pedal.
This post, however, basically consists of only three letters:


LOL

 

[el murdoque]

The yellow pedal inside a brown van,
the van is driven by a brown clad man.
The parcels many, the man alone,
he fought the clock to reach my home.
It was a race, a brutal chase,
to deliver the parcel into my waiting embrace,
but his display told him "Return to base"

Damn. Not even UPS is on time these days.

 

[arepa_funk]

How would you describe the nature of the Ginger? I've only played a Portaflex from the sixties once, and I thought it sounded muffled - but that was of course running through the original cabinet, which was quite unable to provide any kind of treble. How do the highs sound here? How does it do when things get dirty?

I'd say it's definitely low gain. Cranking the gain it doesn't get terribly dirty. Highs are fine, I usually keep treble at noon and bass at 2 o'clock. I'm playing passive basses with flats so that may be having an effect on how I hear the highs. I haven't played through am SB-12, but I have used many Ampeg emulating pedals (Fliptop, VT Bass, One Control, Sushi Slampegg, others) and this one is up there in DRIVE sound only, I wouldn't compare it to those for the preamp component. For me, I only use it through the Linden, I never use it as a drive only. I need that pre tone for the drive to work. That's just me though. There are many posts on TB about the ROG Ginger/Flipster and folks like it for other purposes. Hope this helps!

 

[Parzival]

Can't wait to hear your latest go 'round with this beauty, @el murdoque!

Sometimes you've just gotta give things in life another chance

View attachment 7004740

These things can actually sound good, but not in the way you would think. There is another bass player in town that I am buddies with. Went and saw him a while back and noticed the ODB on his board. I said, it sure doesn't sound like you're using an ODB. He basically had a tuner, the ODB, and a straight DI box (Radial maybe?). He did not have an amp behind him, just a monitor speaker and FOH. He would just use the EQ and cut/boost knobs then dial the blend almost all the way to clean and then put the gain barely above Min. It sounded pretty good.

 

[el murdoque]

These things can actually sound good, but not in the way you would think. There is another bass player in town that I am buddies with. Went and saw him a while back and noticed the ODB on his board. I said, it sure doesn't sound like you're using an ODB. He basically had a tuner, the ODB, and a straight DI box (Radial maybe?). He did not have an amp behind him, just a monitor speaker and FOH. He would just use the EQ and cut/boost knobs then dial the blend almost all the way to clean and then put the gain barely above Min. It sounded pretty good.

It's a sad thing that there never was a Waza version of that pedal. Was there?

 

[el murdoque]

Those brown <insert moderately aggressive swearword>!
Yet again, out for delivery, yet again, problems.

 

[Parzival]

Those brown <insert moderately aggressive swearword>!
Yet again, out for delivery, yet again, problems.

My dog shares your feelings towards the brown. He has an irrational hatred of them.

 

[el murdoque]

My dog shares your feelings towards the brown. He has an irrational hatred of them.

Mine hates the regular post people, but the brown guys are okay. Maybe because my dog-food-dealer uses UPS.

 

[el murdoque]

This slowly stops being funny if you ask me.
We're on the best track of creating a new tradition. Brown van leaves depot, drives around a bit, then returns home.
Third day in a row now.


But not today. Today is not a day for complaints (I hope).
Today is a day to go home and play with the toy that a different color van brought over.

 

[el murdoque]

I can tell you there is a learning curve attached to the Capo.

When I plugged it in and ran bass -> Capo -> LA-1A -> Mixer (headphones), for the first five minutes, I simply hated it.
The first impression was that the dirt you get sounds more or less like that one time you thought your cabinet was broken because it farted out on certain notes and you started troubleshooting and at one point you found out that there was a sheet of paper on the cupboard next to the bass amp that would resonate with those frequencies and made a weird noise.
Not at all like beautiful dirt, but much rather unwanted noise you'd like to get rid off.

So, let's start properly. There must be some good stuff in there. It's a $500 pedal with a 10 weeks waiting list, after all.

I set the parametric knob to around 800Hz and then dimed everything else. In that setup, we're getting heavy overdrive. Not distortion and not fuzz. It's still overdrive when you max out the EQ and both gain knobs.
The first thing my ears told me is that the EQ section sits in front of the clipping stage, at least that of the A side. The B-side is switchable and I will have to determine if the EQ comes after the B side clipping if you run B into A.
That all important knob in the middle, the one that lets you seamlessly blend two different preamps or something remained a mystery. Something of a "hey, that position sounds slightly less bad, so it must be the sweet spot".
After a lengthy bit of knob twiddling, I ended up with a sound I kinda liked. The treble content is just shy of getting pearly. When I run the Broughton RFE into the Noble, I can be generous with the treble knob and that makes it sound like pearly fingers caressing pearly strings with the finest silk you've ever heard.
The Capo does not get there, even with a little help. But it gets pearly.
However, what I kinda missed was a the rich choir of hungover angels, singing overtones to the roots I provided.

--- slightly put off by the experience so far, I decided to skip preamping and go full on dirtboxing.
My home playing testbench board currently runs a Broughton Studio One into a ZeroFive LowRider into the LA-1A for the tone. I switched all of these on and tried to get some sweet dirt out of the Capo. That worked a lot better. I could use the entire EQ to shape the signal hitting the clipping stage and listen to the nature of the drive, shaping it with a three band that has parametric mids, plus buttons for Deep and Bite.
Still that one knob in the middle remained a mystery. I'm gonna have to RTFM about that one.



Session one conclusion:
There is probably something really good in there, but it's hidden well.

I don't have the Super Vintage here right now, which is good. A/B testing those two at this stage would make me list the Capo immediately, I fear.

 

[sunbeast]

I can tell you there is a learning curve attached to the Capo.

View attachment 7006625


When I plugged it in and ran bass -> Capo -> LA-1A -> Mixer (headphones), for the first five minutes, I simply hated it.
The first impression was that the dirt you get sounds more or less like that one time you thought your cabinet was broken because it farted out on certain notes and you started troubleshooting and at one point you found out that there was a sheet of paper on the cupboard next to the bass amp that would resonate with those frequencies and made a weird noise.
Not at all like beautiful dirt, but much rather unwanted noise you'd like to get rid off.

So, let's start properly. There must be some good stuff in there. It's a $500 pedal with a 10 weeks waiting list, after all.

I set the parametric knob to around 800Hz and then dimed everything else. In that setup, we're getting heavy overdrive. Not distortion and not fuzz. It's still overdrive when you max out the EQ and both gain knobs.
The first thing my ears told me is that the EQ section sits in front of the clipping stage, at least that of the A side. The B-side is switchable and I will have to determine if the EQ comes after the B side clipping if you run B into A.
That all important knob in the middle, the one that lets you seamlessly blend two different preamps or something remained a mystery. Something of a "hey, that position sounds slightly less bad, so it must be the sweet spot".
After a lengthy bit of knob twiddling, I ended up with a sound I kinda liked. The treble content is just shy of getting pearly. When I run the Broughton RFE into the Noble, I can be generous with the treble knob and that makes it sound like pearly fingers caressing pearly strings with the finest silk you've ever heard.
The Capo does not get there, even with a little help. But it gets pearly.
However, what I kinda missed was a the rich choir of hungover angels, singing overtones to the roots I provided.

--- slightly put off by the experience so far, I decided to skip preamping and go full on dirtboxing.
My home playing testbench board currently runs a Broughton Studio One into a ZeroFive LowRider into the LA-1A for the tone. I switched all of these on and tried to get some sweet dirt out of the Capo. That worked a lot better. I could use the entire EQ to shape the signal hitting the clipping stage and listen to the nature of the drive, shaping it with a three band that has parametric mids, plus buttons for Deep and Bite.
Still that one knob in the middle remained a mystery. I'm gonna have to RTFM about that one.



Session one conclusion:
There is probably something really good in there, but it's hidden well.

I don't have the Super Vintage here right now, which is good. A/B testing those two at this stage would make me list the Capo immediately, I fear.

From my reading and videos I've watched, the J/F dial is essentially a mid-contour into clipping section that scoops mids when rolled towards the J side (or conversely boosts them when rolled to the F side?). The way its worded is as if they are two completely different drive circuits being blended though- similar to the Alpha and Omega sides of the Morph knob on the Darkglass AO pedals where one side is supposedly derived from the Blackstone Mosfet and is more mid-forward drive and one side I believe from the Boss ODB-3 and more mid-scooped distortion, though the character differences between the sides on the Capo sound more subtle to me than in the DG AO so I suspect they are just different voicing filters into the clipping section.

While all the talk of the Capo on TB and among some of the Youtube bass influencers has certainly intrigued me and I love the idea of all the nice tweakability and routing options (possibly where it would become most useful to me vs as a tonal magic box), I have yet to hear a demo of the dirt section that really impressed me much compared to the eclectic bunch of dirt pedals I already have. The clean and edge of breakup tones sound pretty nice in some clips though. Especially given the price and wait time, I feel like I'd be twiddling knobs endlessly and not quite finding nirvana. I did almost snag one in the Classifieds out of curiosity a year or so ago (knowing I could flip it without losing anything), but I suspect I would have been disappointed. A TBer whose work and ear I respect compared the dirt of the Capo to clipping of a console preamp/interface, and that's a pretty good description of how I hear it too- it just doesn't have that amp-like drive I gravitate to at least in clips, too buzzy/fuzzy once the gain gets up into the clearly audible threshold. That said, I haven't been that impressed with clips of the Origin DCX either and people I often align with do like that one, so I may well still have to give both of them a go myself someday. If I still rocked all-tube amps all the time I could imagine something like the Capo working pretty well for me, when most of my character is down to the amp and not my pedalboard (I played a Keeley-modded Rat or Tubescreamer into an SVT for years and had killer tones, amps like that are often a whole lot more forgiving of what you put in!)

 

[el murdoque]

While all the talk of the Capo on TB and among some of the Youtube bass influencers has certainly intrigued me and I love the idea of all the nice tweakability and routing options (possibly where it would become most useful to me vs as a tonal magic box), I have yet to hear a demo of the dirt section that really impressed me much compared to the eclectic bunch of dirt pedals I already have. The clean and edge of breakup tones sound pretty nice in some clips though. Especially given the price and wait time, I feel like I'd be twiddling knobs endlessly and not quite finding nirvana. I did almost snag one in the Classifieds out of curiosity a year or so ago (knowing I could flip it without losing anything), but I suspect I would have been disappointed. A TBer whose work and ear I respect compared the dirt of the Capo to clipping of a console preamp/interface, and that's a pretty good description of how I hear it too- it just doesn't have that amp-like drive I gravitate to at least in clips, too buzzy/fuzzy once the gain gets up into the clearly audible threshold.

My exact thoughts at this moment. Since I have it now, I'll play around a bit more to find some goodness in there. But I'd wager money that when I put it up against the Super Vintage, there will be a clear winner.

One more thing that I did not write about earlier because it completely slipped my mind: The touch responsiveness is a bit wonky. It totally works, but it kind of feels numb. There is no push back to speak of (something the Fake Plastic Trees excels at) and it feels like some very mild and cleverly designed compression sets in. The best I can do to describe it is that I could not feel it in my finger tips without concentrating on my ears.

 

[Parzival]

The treble content is just shy of getting pearly. When I run the Broughton RFE into the Noble, I can be generous with the treble knob and that makes it sound like pearly fingers caressing pearly strings with the finest silk you've ever heard.

However, what I kinda missed was a the rich choir of hungover angels, singing overtones to the roots I provided.

Gold Jerry, gold!

There are two reasons I visit this thread. First, I like to see all the cool pedals Mr. El Murdoque is trying out. Second, the wonderful descriptions of bass sounds. When Parzival describes bass tone, it's basically, yeah that sounds good, that one's dirty, bassy, trebly, etc. I will now be on a quest to find out what a treble boosted pearly silk tone sounds like.

 

[el murdoque]

A few more thoughts about the Capo.

1. The blend knob does not blend between dry and wet. It blends between a fixed gain preamp stage and the A Side. When you set it to 100% "dry", you still get the EQ. So if you want to clip the B side only, you can actually use the A Side with the blend fully CCW and then you can choose if you want to run the clipping into the EQ or the EQ into the clipping.

2. The Controls for the B side include the Level knob. You can run B into A with the level very high, which increases the Gain on the A side a LOT because it sees a much hotter signal. This can be compensated with the Level knob of A, but only if you're permanently running B into A.

I found that I like the B side grit a bit more than that of the A side and that it is possible to use A to get just a bit of saturation and B to kick in some more Gain to send it to drive.

In my current and humble personal opinion, that pedal somewhat lacks character and I actually feel a bit surprised about how there is such a hype around it.
I have not put the two FX loops to use yet, and I can't really see myself doing that, because I don't really understand the benefits.
(I do understand how FX loops work and how they are utilized).



However, in my current state of mind, with my limited experience, I can't say that the saturation you get from the A side can easily rival that of a BJFe Blueberry, Fairfield Barbershop, Hudson Broadcast or JPTR FX Jive. These are from the top of my head, but I'd attest each of them a little something that is more lively, more organic and provides a better feeling when playing through them - all head and shoulders above the Capo's capabilities.

 

[el murdoque]

I am very happy that UPS did not create a tradition, but put on their running shoes today, so the parcel from New Orleans finally arrived, carrying a long anticipated and rather expensive yellow pedal, which looks a lot more orange than on the pictures I've seen..

 

[Parzival]

The old dirty bastard

 

[Charlie Tuna]

I am very happy that UPS did not create a tradition, but put on their running shoes today, so the parcel from New Orleans finally arrived, carrying a long anticipated and rather expensive yellow pedal, which looks a lot more orange than on the pictures I've seen..

View attachment 7007010

Did you get bait-and-switched?

 

[el murdoque]

I'm sorry. I just had to continue with the joke @sloppy_phil started.

No ODB-3 arrived in my home. At this point I doubt a second go could yield better results.

The yellow pedal in question is of course the Free The Tone Bass Blaster.

 

[el murdoque]

I was at a gig tonight (as a spectator), so not much time to play it.
Very brief first impression: Touch sensitive, and even with the active EQ controls (pretty sure they are post clipping) it is somewhat on the mellow side of things. The dirt itself sounds a bit ... I want to say farty, but I need to elaborate. I don't mean the ripping kind of a semi wet fart that only a small percentage of people enjoy hearing while others find it disgusting. I mean the more family friendly humorous fart that sounds dry and has a certain honk to it.

I only had a few moments to plug it in, check if it's okay and quickly play a few notes, running through the controls.
More on that later.

 

[GrowlerBox]

I was at a gig tonight (as a spectator), so not much time to play it.
Very brief first impression: Touch sensitive, and even with the active EQ controls (pretty sure they are post clipping) it is somewhat on the mellow side of things. The dirt itself sounds a bit ... I want to say farty, but I need to elaborate. I don't mean the ripping kind of a semi wet fart that only a small percentage of people enjoy hearing while others find it disgusting. I mean the more family friendly humorous fart that sounds dry and has a certain honk to it.

I only had a few moments to plug it in, check if it's okay and quickly play a few notes, running through the controls.
More on that later.

I know this is a dirt bender, but for some reason I had it in my head that the yellow pedal was going to be a Diamond compressor. Can be sorta dirty, I guess, but I was waaay off.

Looking forward to an extended disquisition on the finer points of fart tones.