Schwinggg!!! What an awesome pedal! I had never heard of the concept of 'dirty compressor' until reading a few postings here on TB. Decided to try the Sex Drive, and also ordered a FF Accountant which is en route.
I love just a bit of compression, and a bit of saturation in my bass tone. Saturation as in fatness of tone from cranking the gain just to the point of audible breakup, and then backing it down to where the breakup is gone but there is a bit of extra harmonic juiciness. On my main board I have an Empress comp, and 4-5 different flavors of light OD for variety. Always takes a bit of fiddling to dial in the drives and the compression when setting up.
Given the number of parameters that I have to adjust to get my sound with a typical compressor, and the interaction between the drive output and comp threshold settings, I was skeptical about the all-in-one concept of the Sex Drive. Usually comps with pre-set attack and release have much too fast of an attack for my taste, and often heavy comp ratio as well in order to get a more dramatic effect. How could this pedal possibly have all the settings pre-set to work for me?
In spite of these misgivings, I had to try it out - in large part due to favorable reviews here on TB. Well that and the name. Happy to say, I'm glad I tried it! It's as if I sat down with the pedal designer and he took notes on how I setup my comp and drive, and built all my preferences into one little box!
The Soft comp setting has a very smooth transition to gain reduction, you can tell it's compressing but no obvious point when gr kicks in. The hard setting has a nice but subtle thud added in the attack. Basically a hard knee / soft knee switch to my ears, though I don't know if it's just a higher ratio for the 'hard' setting or if the compression curve really is different. I prefer the hard setting but soft is a nice option as well.
Setup could not be easier. I set the comp switch to hard, dial up the gain to the point just before breakup, and set the output to match unity bypass. Perfect! Moderate amount of compression, no pumping, attack slow enough to let the natural attack of my bass through, slight thump added to the attack, and fat harmonics that really bloom on notes higher up the neck.
The tone knob can add a lot of high end when dialed all the way up; but dialing it completely off still leaves all the definition that I want. Totally different from a typical tone control that rolls off all the highs and leaves just the murky bottom end. For my playing (mostly fingerstyle and thumb, no slap) there was very little difference between all the way CC and noon, so I just kept the tone all the way down.
Other reviews on TB have noted some LF rolloff with this pedal; I didn't notice it on 4-string during rehearsal or when practicing at home. I'm usually sensitive to low end loss; if there is some with the SD it was not enough to make me change my EQ settings.
Even at the most extreme gain setting there is just a slight amount of breakup, probably more in the 'dirty boost' category then 'overdrive'. It won't replace my regular pedal board, but for rehearsals and jamming when I don't want to drag along the board this is just the ticket and I can power it with a 9v.
There is no gr metering on the pedal. Usually that would be a problem for me - I'll typically set up a comp by ear, make a mental note of the corresponding meter action, and then use the meter for future setup or to verify settings especially in noisy live situations. With the SD I'm dialing in the sound based on amount breakup, which I find is easier to hear then compression action esp on a noisy stage. So while it would be nice to have a meter I think it's easier to live without it due to the dual nature of this pedal.
I love just a bit of compression, and a bit of saturation in my bass tone. Saturation as in fatness of tone from cranking the gain just to the point of audible breakup, and then backing it down to where the breakup is gone but there is a bit of extra harmonic juiciness. On my main board I have an Empress comp, and 4-5 different flavors of light OD for variety. Always takes a bit of fiddling to dial in the drives and the compression when setting up.
Given the number of parameters that I have to adjust to get my sound with a typical compressor, and the interaction between the drive output and comp threshold settings, I was skeptical about the all-in-one concept of the Sex Drive. Usually comps with pre-set attack and release have much too fast of an attack for my taste, and often heavy comp ratio as well in order to get a more dramatic effect. How could this pedal possibly have all the settings pre-set to work for me?
In spite of these misgivings, I had to try it out - in large part due to favorable reviews here on TB. Well that and the name. Happy to say, I'm glad I tried it! It's as if I sat down with the pedal designer and he took notes on how I setup my comp and drive, and built all my preferences into one little box!
The Soft comp setting has a very smooth transition to gain reduction, you can tell it's compressing but no obvious point when gr kicks in. The hard setting has a nice but subtle thud added in the attack. Basically a hard knee / soft knee switch to my ears, though I don't know if it's just a higher ratio for the 'hard' setting or if the compression curve really is different. I prefer the hard setting but soft is a nice option as well.
Setup could not be easier. I set the comp switch to hard, dial up the gain to the point just before breakup, and set the output to match unity bypass. Perfect! Moderate amount of compression, no pumping, attack slow enough to let the natural attack of my bass through, slight thump added to the attack, and fat harmonics that really bloom on notes higher up the neck.
The tone knob can add a lot of high end when dialed all the way up; but dialing it completely off still leaves all the definition that I want. Totally different from a typical tone control that rolls off all the highs and leaves just the murky bottom end. For my playing (mostly fingerstyle and thumb, no slap) there was very little difference between all the way CC and noon, so I just kept the tone all the way down.
Other reviews on TB have noted some LF rolloff with this pedal; I didn't notice it on 4-string during rehearsal or when practicing at home. I'm usually sensitive to low end loss; if there is some with the SD it was not enough to make me change my EQ settings.
Even at the most extreme gain setting there is just a slight amount of breakup, probably more in the 'dirty boost' category then 'overdrive'. It won't replace my regular pedal board, but for rehearsals and jamming when I don't want to drag along the board this is just the ticket and I can power it with a 9v.
There is no gr metering on the pedal. Usually that would be a problem for me - I'll typically set up a comp by ear, make a mental note of the corresponding meter action, and then use the meter for future setup or to verify settings especially in noisy live situations. With the SD I'm dialing in the sound based on amount breakup, which I find is easier to hear then compression action esp on a noisy stage. So while it would be nice to have a meter I think it's easier to live without it due to the dual nature of this pedal.
