My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[sloppy_phil]

You're like the Energizer Bunny of dirt pedals; when others would quit or falter, you just keep on keeping on.

I am also not remotely a fan of the DG sound (you legitimately could not pay me to use any of their gear!), so I understand your concern regarding the Scorpion EQ, but I don't find it does that same kind of thing. I usually use reasonably fresh roundwounds on my basses, so find that I only need to add a touch of treble via the EQ. It can get kinda aggro, in a slice-your-head-off kind of way, but especially for playing high-gain music (thinking of your metal band here), I see that largely as a benefit. Mind you... I do have a P with dead-ass flats that I should consider for a Scorpion test. Just to see!

To me, the special sauce of that pedal is the Depth knob, allows for real flexibility in terms of just how distorted the overall signal feels. Add in the fact that it's an original circuit design by St. Joshua, and there isn't really much else on the market that sounds quite like it. It's not a mythical unicorn (or should I say centaur? lol), but it is a fairly unique sound, and a pedal I remain incredibly happy with after 18 months.

Which colour of D2 did you go for?

 

[sunbeast]

So I picked up an Origin DCX and my results are somewhat surprising. I must admit I’m not much of a fan of its clipping character- there is a sorta fizzy top-end thing that I get from some fuzz pedals that works fine in a dense mix but is not that pleasant to me on its own. I tried it with both my current regular bands, a west-African groove-based group and a more indie rock-ish group and in the African group that fizz stuck out too much (to be fair I almost always play clean in that group anyway) while the general character of the drive didn’t really suite the other band to my tastes either. I’ll definitely give it some more time and fiddle with settings more before ditching the drive options, particularly messing with the tone switch (I left it flat in my tests as it made things too dark when trying it soloed).

What I didn’t expect was how much I’d like it as just a general tone glue/sweetener pedal. Whatever it is doing when set just below audible breakup is really something glorious. With the EQ set flat it sounds like there is a tasteful mild mid-scoop and maybe some light harmonic saturation happening that makes everything sound bigger in a really pleasant way so that I didn’t want to turn it off. It also complemented the drive from my Blackstone Mosfet (so far just put after the Blackstone) in the indie band really nicely- beefing up what can be a slightly thin and mid-heavy tone from the Blackstone. The EQ points and Q are also really nicely chosen and not like any of my other EQ devices at the moment (I rarely boost bass with anything but love boosting this bass control). So even if I don’t find a use for the drive parts, I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere at this point.

 

[Charlie Tuna]

west-African groove-based group

Would love to hear clips of this band.

 

[el murdoque]

Which colour of D2 did you go for?

Safety Orange.

 

[el murdoque]

So I picked up an Origin DCX and my results are somewhat surprising. I must admit I’m not much of a fan of its clipping character- there is a sorta fizzy top-end thing that I get from some fuzz pedals that works fine in a dense mix but is not that pleasant to me on its own. I tried it with both my current regular bands, a west-African groove-based group and a more indie rock-ish group and in the African group that fizz stuck out too much (to be fair I almost always play clean in that group anyway) while the general character of the drive didn’t really suite the other band to my tastes either. I’ll definitely give it some more time and fiddle with settings more before ditching the drive options, particularly messing with the tone switch (I left it flat in my tests as it made things too dark when trying it soloed).

What I didn’t expect was how much I’d like it as just a general tone glue/sweetener pedal. Whatever it is doing when set just below audible breakup is really something glorious. With the EQ set flat it sounds like there is a tasteful mild mid-scoop and maybe some light harmonic saturation happening that makes everything sound bigger in a really pleasant way so that I didn’t want to turn it off. It also complemented the drive from my Blackstone Mosfet (so far just put after the Blackstone) in the indie band really nicely- beefing up what can be a slightly thin and mid-heavy tone from the Blackstone. The EQ points and Q are also really nicely chosen and not like any of my other EQ devices at the moment (I rarely boost bass with anything but love boosting this bass control). So even if I don’t find a use for the drive parts, I don’t think it’ll be going anywhere at this point.

It's a surprising device for sure. Was it not suggested in this very thread to use the Bassrig as the dirt box and the DCX as the preamp?

I feel that both the bass and treble knobs are meant to 'enhance' what is there in a very tasteful and expensive sounding manner and not so much just pump up the EQ ...

 

[sunbeast]

Would love to hear clips of this band.

The bandleader Koffi is strongly opinionated about music being a shared live energy thing and so is very resistant to video recordings (which is a trip after years of trying to promote a band of mine in Los Angeles, where internet content was ultimately more important than live music!). Its kinda cool, and not unlike my pre-internet bands where you had to build an audience playing live (seems like a lifetime ago). In a lot of ways this band is the punkest band I've played in despite growing up playing in many "punk" bands.

I have a few low-quality cel clips that friends have sent me, we are talking about recording some music this winter hopefully.

Here's a kora jam from I think my second time playing with them:

These days I always play my Godin fretless, here's a pretty lo-fi clip from our last gig with the DCX on it (though the bass is too blown out in the phone recording to hear any of that!) I'll have to find some better recent ones somewhere!:

Here’s a clip I just found from a gig at a church we played a few months back. Still not a great example due to all the reverb!

 

[sunbeast]

It's a surprising device for sure. Was it not suggested in this very thread to use the Bassrig as the dirt box and the DCX as the preamp?

I feel that both the bass and treble knobs are meant to 'enhance' what is there in a very tasteful and expensive sounding manner and not so much just pump up the EQ ...

Yeah it wasn't what i thought I was looking for at all, but what it does is pretty dang useful and much nicer to my ears than the more surgical EQ pedals that I've tried to tweak similar things out of. I'll definitely need more time experimenting to really wrap my head around it completely

 

[el murdoque]

Yeah it wasn't what i thought I was looking for at all, but what it does is pretty dang useful and much nicer to my ears than the more surgical EQ pedals that I've tried to tweak similar things out of. I'll definitely need more time experimenting to really wrap my head around it completely

I think I said before that the DCX can make your rig sound $1500 more expensive and I stand by it.

 

[el murdoque]

When I hit the lab yesterday, I forgot to bring my ears. Or enter the proper mindset. I can't really tell, but I felt like I was in no real mood to try out dirt pedals.
The Gladio felt like it has some things to offer, but I was unable to set it properly.
Here's what I gathered nonetheless:
-The clean blend feels a bit like it's not really doing much. Turning it from 0-10 and back did not impact the sound in a meaningful way.
-The Comp switch feels like a bass cut. In the upper position, the sound gets thinner.
-The tone control is maybe not really geared towards basses with flats, because I could not get it to do overly much either.


So I switched over to the VB-2 and gave that a shake.
What we got here is a very simple thing - let's use the established terms and call the knobs gain and volume.

Then we get two more knobs labeled Bias.
I wanted to abuse terms in such a way that you electrical folk curl your toes - but not in the good way, but I found that the maker of the pedal does a much better job of explaining the whole thing:

Bias. There are also two of these. The first one controls the bias of the first transistor. The second controls the bias of the second transistor. Easy enough. What’s really going on here is we are changing the resistance (and therefore the current) on the emitter side of each of the transistors. When we change this value, the voltage on the transistor changes, and therefore the cut-off and saturation points change as well. If we wanted to be really nice to the transistors (and our ears) we would find a nice safe spot in the middle between cut-off and saturation so that the signal didn’t clip or cut out or sputter or do anything weird. However, I have a feeling you might want to try some other things with them. By changing the bias, we are essentially changing the gain as well, so turning up the bias knobs will add volume and saturation. Turn them up high enough and the transistors will start gating and getting extra fuzzy. Try turning up both bias controls all the way and notice that it will actually act as a noise gate. It will only allow a signal that is large enough to pass, and it will mute anything that is too quiet (the humming of your pickups for example).

At one end of the pedal's spectrum, we get a clean boost. Just turn down both bias knobs and ride the gain low and the volume high, easy enough.
At the other end of the spectrum, we get an acoustic chainsaw massacre but all the gore is electric, not actual guts.
The sound gets very fuzzy - some angry hornets trapped in a tin can, that unpleasant upper harmonic content that is set out to kill your ears. It also gets spluttery and, as the manual suggests, gated. It might be a good idea to send an OC-2 set to -1 only into that pedal to get some synth madness going, but I don't have any octave pedals with me at the moment.

Now the thing is, you can basically select how much stress you want to put on either the front or rear transistor and how these cascade into each other, which gives you a mind boggling number of options. Imagine you set everything to 2 o'clock which gives you an audible overdrive. Now you decide that this is not the right amount of overdrive. To get more drive, you can increase Gain, Bias1, Bias2 or you could also manipulate the voltage you feed the pedal.
Everything has a slightly different impact on what happens to the output signal. I also have the feeling that the volume knob also impacts how the second stage is hit, but I'm not entirely sure about it - and after all, you need at least one knob that will reign in what you did to the signal as not to overpower the following signal chain.


I ended the session playing electric drums into an analog synth chain, which was fun, but not in a useful way.

 

[el murdoque]

Could the users of the Scorpion tell me if the EQ is pre or post clipping?

 

[Zbysek]

Could the users of the Scorpion tell me if the EQ is pre or post clipping?

It's post, AFAIK

"Depth" is basically a bass control pre-clipping

 

[warptheory]

I'm shooting out my dirt pedals seeing which one makes it to the board.

Right now it's between the tubedrv, Gladio, Fliptop, and Locust Star. Each one brings something different.

 

[el murdoque]

It's post, AFAIK

"Depth" is basically a bass control pre-clipping

Thanks! Interesting!

 

[el murdoque]

I'm shooting out my dirt pedals seeing which one makes it to the board.

Right now it's between the tubedrv, Gladio, Fliptop, and Locust Star. Each one brings something different.


View attachment 7045324View attachment 7045325

That's a wild selection! Do you only have that small spot shown on the right pic?

 

[warptheory]

Yea, the rest of the board is taken up by other effects, including the Capo, which is dirt adjacent. So really only enough space for 2 top jack drives.

I have my low gain sounds pretty much covered with the Capo and the B-Side boost, and the SV-Boost on the top right, so really looking for a higher gain, not necessarily distortion, but medium gain for when I want to get dirty or accentuate the chorus of a song.

Full board pic:

 

[el murdoque]

That is, by the way, the exact chorus I'm GASing for. Do you like it?

 

[el murdoque]

Yea, the rest of the board is taken up by other effects, including the Capo, which is dirt adjacent. So really only enough space for 2 top jack drives.

I have my low gain sounds pretty much covered with the Capo and the B-Side boost, and the SV-Boost on the top right, so really looking for a higher gain, not necessarily distortion, but medium gain for when I want to get dirty or accentuate the chorus of a song.

Full board pic:
View attachment 7045434

BTW, that board gets the Cork Sniffer's Sign Of Approval!
A nice alloy of unobtanium and expensivum.

 

[sloppy_phil]

BTW, that board gets the Cork Sniffer's Sign Of Approval!
A nice alloy of unobtanium and expensivum.

Ooh. This could be a fun game.

Where does this rate on the Cork Sniffer Approval Matrix?

I wouldn't consider myself a sniffer of corks, but at a recent gig I had a couple other musicians on the bill mention that, tuner aside, they didn't recognize a single pedal on my board, despite their huge interest in pedals and gear. Makes me think I've perhaps strayed into Sniffer territory without intending to...

 

[el murdoque]

Well. Three Iron Ethers, three Broughtons, a very much discontinued Sushi Box and two pedals that are on the cheaper side and readily available to buy from shops. I will have to deduct a point for the TC Polytune Mini, obviously the cork sniffer's choice would be either the Sonic Research or the Peterson Mini, but I'll give back half a point because it's scratched and has some patina - and one of the expensive barefoot buttons.

 

[GrowlerBox]

Well. Three Iron Ethers, three Broughtons, a very much discontinued Sushi Box and two pedals that are on the cheaper side and readily available to buy from shops. I will have to deduct a point for the TC Polytune Mini, obviously the cork sniffer's choice would be either the Sonic Research or the Peterson Mini, but I'll give back half a point because it's scratched and has some patina - and one of the expensive barefoot buttons.

Would a Waza-craft Boss tuner count? I’m all about discontinued Petersons myself, but thinking about the little people and their aspirations, you know?