So this is the test bench I mad-professored together. The three preamps, a little dirty boost in front, a tube comp and LPF/HPF/DI last.
First things first, I think the Dexter is broken. After a minute of warming up, the sound would cut out occasionally and tapping it would restore it. Furthermore, the Mid knob works as expected, but I can't hear a difference when I turn bass or treble. I'll have to look inside and see if something can explain that behavior.
The sounds I did get from it were ... good. The bass was present, not dominating but certainly not without heft.
The treble was a bit on the harsh side for my taste and I would have liked to reduce it a bit. Running high gain, past 1 o'clock or feeding it with the boost sends it into a distortion that sounds nice when you're hitting the sweet spot of slowly getting there but not arriving quite yet. If you push it one bit further, It gives you the sound of a circuit that neither was meant to be redlined, nor enjoys the experience. It's like harsh clipping and not much fun. To my ears, of course.
Next up the Particle Accelerator. Man that thing is black.
@Sushi Box FX did put an amber LED in there that looks like the tube is glowing. I know I asked him to do that in the past and he politely declined because it gives off a "fake tube glow" vibe. Well, it certainly does and I dig it a lot. I spend a good amount of time with a flashlight in my mouth because the lighting in my den is not sufficient to make out black on black.
I do have some experience with the older PA, and this is the same ballpark. The Mini Tube pedal would not distort no matter what I did, but this one does. If you want to send that tone stack through a tube and distort it on the way, get an Underground Accelerator, though. The PA stays clean a lot longer and then topples over the edge pretty quickly, giving you a rougher clipping that is way better than what the Dexter has to offer, but nowhere near as creamy as the Underground Accelerator. I feel like the highs are mellower here, I even want to say they have a pearly texture. But I can write anything I want here - I have the only one of these in existence. Go ahead and prove me wrong!
It was no problem running this pedal with all the knobs dimed. It was even pleasant. I liked it a lot. Rich and fat bass, not too warm but certainly not cold, pearly highs that worked well with my flats.
Pushing it a bit harder with the Saturn needed some fine tuning but I eventually got there. The Saturn was doing most of the work, but the result kinda felt like a two channel amp head.
The
Ampeg Broughton came next. I've already given this pedal a few laps on my board - not as a preamp, but as an overdrive (which you can read up on in my dirt bender jounal), where my verdict was that it certainly catches the vibe of the SVT, but is way to beefy for my needs. Here I tried to aim for a clean sound.
First impression was that there is not too much output on tap. While the Dexter and the Sushi were able to send the LA-1A into mild compression with the master slightly past noon, on the Broughton I needed to turn it up nearly all the way to match that kind of output. Since I had to keep the gain fairly low, It was barely able to keep up. That's not a deal breaker at all, but something worth mentioning.
I once more struggled a bit to find treble settings I could live with. I certainly needed to flip the treble switch to get some definition into the sound, and I also used the parametric mids for a slight boost nearly all the way up.
I ended up with the bass knob in the neutral (do nothing) position and the bass around 1 o'clock. In my setup, it feels like at noon there is a slight loss of bass, just after noon is flat, and when you cross 1 o'clock, you're introducing mud. The sweet spot is between 12:30 and 1.
Again, this pedal catches the vibe of the SVT. And I need to say it again: I don't much care for that particular amp head. I can coax sounds out of it that work well for me, but It's not the be all end all, like it is for some.
Would I play mainly rock with a P bass with rounds, I think that could be a contender, but I don't use rounds much and I don't play rock much.
My current situation is that I use a Noble for my clean sound and add a Fuzzrocious BDPG for an oldschool sound. None of these pedals here will contest that.
I will have to check the Dexter for mechanical problems. I will also have to return the SV-Pre eventually and I will not really miss it. I liked playing around with it and I can see its worth for many people in many situations, but not for me personally. For me, it worked a lot better as a beefy overdrive in a difficult mix than it did as a clean preamp.
The Sushi Box was bought by the collector in me. I sold my old PA to finance it.
I'm happy with the purchase and already planned building a blacked out pedal board some time in the future with the PA as the preamp on it.
