Cool, if you hit that front end hard enough, it will overdrive. Full bore doesn’t sound so good to me but the Quilter can get a nice soft clip purr going.
I tried with gain on 10 and master low and didn't hear any overdrive. Rolling off the tone knob on my P bass helped a little bit, I was able to hear some light growl when hitting the strings hard but it was barely audible, to be honest. I tried to hit the amp even harder using my Keeley Bassist compressor (set as a boost) and the amp finally started to overdrive. It didn't need a lot of boost to clip, just a touch,
but it must come from a pedal in my case, since my P bass has low output. I was really surprised, I've had some fun for an hour or so.
After that, I put the gain back to 6 (I like it there) and used just the Bassist to boost the amp and it worked again, so cranking the amp's gain to 10 is not necessary. Again, rolling of the tone on my bass make the overdrive a little bit smoother, but rolling of treble using the Contour knob on the amp works even better since it seems to tame fizzy treble frequencies. I ended up with cranked tone on bass and Contour around 3 o'clock (4 detents). Cranking the Depth control increases overdrive, of course.
Honestly, I prefer the overdrive sound of my Mini 66 mixed with the clean compression of the amp, but the BB800 overdrive is definitely usable. I MUST try this on a real cab of course, I did all the tests with active monitors and headphones via DI. I'm sure I'll like the sound better on a good cab.
Most tube amps have no "internal drive circuit" but a cranked tube amp gets grindy.
Even solid state amps can get dirty without an "internal drive circuit."
I know how tubes work, the grind comes from them. When I was talking about "internal drive circuits", I named Aguilar and Darkglass brands specifically because they have a drive circuit built into the amp. The BB800 doesn't have this feature, I think we all agree about that.
I've had many (guitar) solid state amps and I tried to push them with boosters and OD pedals to hear how they react and they ALL sounded absolutely HORRIBLE. Solid state amps are clean platforms usually, I need to know how Quilter managed to make the BB800 sound good when overdriven and nobody seems to give a technical reason I can understand.
Are you still not playing this through a cab? Big difference than going through headphones or monitors.
I'll get a cab as soon as I restart playing with my friends, our rehersal room is under maintenance at the moment.
