(I am an endorser for Ampeg, but I am not an employee and do not get paid money by Ampeg. I'm starting this thread as a convenient way for people to search on it and find the demo clips I made, and it's only slightly about flogging my brand. Now that that's out of the way, pardon the bad pic 
)
So these showed up today. Don't know when they're coming out, but thanks to my friends at Ampeg, I got a sneak preview! I haven't got to spend much time with the preamp, but I was mainly interested in the Scrambler today. I took it to practice with my original instrumental band where a mild overdrive is always on, among other things. Brought my usual JohnK Greedtone clone in case it didn't work out, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if it would. In the SCR-DI and the BA amps, I always thought the Scrambler sounded pretty good but needed some help with EQing some more bass into it when you got into its more extreme settings.
Now feel free to take this next comment about the Scrambler with the usual unbridled Talkbass cynicism reserved especially for endorsers, but I kid you not...I absolutely loved it in every way, and even the guys in the band said it was the best I've sounded, and I've had some damn good OD tones with them Butt-simple to get a great tone within seconds, too.
I've always laughed at the idea of a transparent overdrive, but put the treble knob on noon and I am very hard pressed to detect any fundamental change in EQ no matter how hard I crank the drive knob. The drive knob has a good amount of room for tweaking on the fly before you have to worry about your volume getting too loud. It has a blend knob for those who are into that kind of thing, but I didn't use it, and the low end was always as present and consistent as the clean sound, even at the extreme settings that cause the SCR-DI and BA amps to require a good push of the bass knob.
Unlike the amps and DI, there is no built-in rolloff of the tweeter highs (ditto for the Classic preamp), which is probably more desirable in a pedal than a Swiss Army DI like the SCR-DI. But run them through a tweeterless cab or run a low pass filter after them into a DI, and then you get the full gamut of Ampeggy cranked tones from mild to pretty hard distortion.
Only spent a little time with the preamp pedal, but other than there not being any cut of highs as you get in the SCR-DI's EQ section, it sounds the same to me. Sorry to give it short shrift, but I was way more preoccupied with the Scrambler today. It's an easy-to-use and versatile preamp just like the SCR-DI, though.
But don't just take my word for it... I made a few brief recordings so you could hear for yourself. For two of them I used a PJ with somewhat new Dunlop Super Bright Nickels and EMG Geezers and did P soloed and PJ together. For the third, I didn't forget you curious active bass users...I used my Guitar Factory active neck-thru with EMG PJ's and BQC preamp set flat, and newish D'addario XL's. I played both fingerstyle and pick, but while I recorded samples with the drive knob in a few different positions fingerstyle, I only did all the way down and all the way up with a pick. Also recorded clean samples at the beginning of each group. Signal path was a Southampton All Things Equal clean boost for buffering, into the Scrambler, into a Broughton Low Pass filter set to cut highs like a tweeterless cab for the drive sounds (not used on the clean sounds), into a REDDI. Treble on the Scrambler was left at noon, no blend, and only the drive knob was moved. Have fun!
)So these showed up today. Don't know when they're coming out, but thanks to my friends at Ampeg, I got a sneak preview! I haven't got to spend much time with the preamp, but I was mainly interested in the Scrambler today. I took it to practice with my original instrumental band where a mild overdrive is always on, among other things. Brought my usual JohnK Greedtone clone in case it didn't work out, and to be honest, I wasn't sure if it would. In the SCR-DI and the BA amps, I always thought the Scrambler sounded pretty good but needed some help with EQing some more bass into it when you got into its more extreme settings.
Now feel free to take this next comment about the Scrambler with the usual unbridled Talkbass cynicism reserved especially for endorsers, but I kid you not...I absolutely loved it in every way, and even the guys in the band said it was the best I've sounded, and I've had some damn good OD tones with them
Butt-simple to get a great tone within seconds, too.I've always laughed at the idea of a transparent overdrive, but put the treble knob on noon and I am very hard pressed to detect any fundamental change in EQ no matter how hard I crank the drive knob. The drive knob has a good amount of room for tweaking on the fly before you have to worry about your volume getting too loud. It has a blend knob for those who are into that kind of thing, but I didn't use it, and the low end was always as present and consistent as the clean sound, even at the extreme settings that cause the SCR-DI and BA amps to require a good push of the bass knob.
Unlike the amps and DI, there is no built-in rolloff of the tweeter highs (ditto for the Classic preamp), which is probably more desirable in a pedal than a Swiss Army DI like the SCR-DI. But run them through a tweeterless cab or run a low pass filter after them into a DI, and then you get the full gamut of Ampeggy cranked tones from mild to pretty hard distortion.
Only spent a little time with the preamp pedal, but other than there not being any cut of highs as you get in the SCR-DI's EQ section, it sounds the same to me. Sorry to give it short shrift, but I was way more preoccupied with the Scrambler today. It's an easy-to-use and versatile preamp just like the SCR-DI, though.
But don't just take my word for it... I made a few brief recordings so you could hear for yourself. For two of them I used a PJ with somewhat new Dunlop Super Bright Nickels and EMG Geezers and did P soloed and PJ together. For the third, I didn't forget you curious active bass users...I used my Guitar Factory active neck-thru with EMG PJ's and BQC preamp set flat, and newish D'addario XL's. I played both fingerstyle and pick, but while I recorded samples with the drive knob in a few different positions fingerstyle, I only did all the way down and all the way up with a pick. Also recorded clean samples at the beginning of each group. Signal path was a Southampton All Things Equal clean boost for buffering, into the Scrambler, into a Broughton Low Pass filter set to cut highs like a tweeterless cab for the drive sounds (not used on the clean sounds), into a REDDI. Treble on the Scrambler was left at noon, no blend, and only the drive knob was moved. Have fun!
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