Well, we're gonna see how this goes:
I've spent most of my 40-ish bass playing years plugging straight into the bass rig but I've recently started investigating preamp pedals.
My first experiment was a BDDI, purchased to add a little bite to passive basses in my punk band, and I was pretty happy with the results.
The ZIO is solving a different problem, which is that I prefer active basses when I play fretless but I have a few passive fretless basses that I don't want to modify. A preamp pedal and a short cable seemed like the obvious choice and, based solely upon testing at the music store and at home, I think it's going to work out well. Even though it's not built into the bass it's definitely giving me the buffering effect that I like from an onboard pre.
When I tried it at the music store I was comparing it to a Darkglass Harmonic Booster. They were both really good sounding pedals for entirely different reasons and I could have made either one work for me but, ultimately, the ZIO won out for my purposes. I'm looking forward to hearing it in a band context.
I've spent most of my 40-ish bass playing years plugging straight into the bass rig but I've recently started investigating preamp pedals.
My first experiment was a BDDI, purchased to add a little bite to passive basses in my punk band, and I was pretty happy with the results.
The ZIO is solving a different problem, which is that I prefer active basses when I play fretless but I have a few passive fretless basses that I don't want to modify. A preamp pedal and a short cable seemed like the obvious choice and, based solely upon testing at the music store and at home, I think it's going to work out well. Even though it's not built into the bass it's definitely giving me the buffering effect that I like from an onboard pre.
When I tried it at the music store I was comparing it to a Darkglass Harmonic Booster. They were both really good sounding pedals for entirely different reasons and I could have made either one work for me but, ultimately, the ZIO won out for my purposes. I'm looking forward to hearing it in a band context.
