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recommend me a new distorfuzz

#65
andrew said:
The Idiotbox Blowerbox is a distortion pedal made to emulate the bass tone from the early Voivod records.

http://idiotboxeffects.bigcartel.com/product/blower-box-bass-distortion
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Now THAT sounds interesting. Blacky used Marshall.

http://www.voivodfan.com/bass.htm

I'm sure it would sound different with a different bass. Excane's demos are all with the MTD, which doesn't sound very good to me clean. My basses generally have a much thicker tone.

When listening to demos, you're really at the mercy of the guy doing the demo. His bass might not sound like yours, his playing style may be completely different. I've seen so-called demos of distortion and fuzz where the guy starts slapping. Pretty useless for the type of player that might be interested in that type of pedal.

And yes, I've been checking out all of those guys mentioned on youtube. It's nice those demos are available, but again it's just enough to give you a general idea. Pick what you're most interested in to try with your own rig.
 
#66
Here's some more impressions of demos I checked out after you guys made suggestions. Listened to so many demos I felt like I was cramming for a test. Had to take a break for a few days. Just burnt and needed to rest my ears.

From my notes -

DMB Bumble: Not bad for a buzz box.

Fuzzrocious: Demon is in the ball park. Pretty good, not as flubby as the RATs.

Empress Multidrive: Impressive. Really good sounding unit, retains definition and tonal character of the guitar. Dist/fuzz is actually pleasant sounding instead of harsh. Would fit well with the girl band / pop-punk xanax crowd.

Could only find one bass demo. The guitar samples of the fuzz on the manufacturer website sound better.

The Empress Heavy is a lot more interesting. But the demo only has about 10 secs of bass.

 
#67
Here's my own demo of the Heavy. I haven't done many demos, so there are a lot of things wrong with how I did this. It's too long, the playing is a little sloppy, etc. I have a clean comparison elsewhere, but this is a StingRay 5 recorded direct through a GT-10B as a clean interface into GarageBand.

The settings are "Weight" all the way up, gain pretty high on the "Heavier" channel, moderate 500 Hz mid cut.

 
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#68
Metal Mitch said:
And for all you DG fans, here's a demo by a guy you haven't mentioned -



This guy does pretty good demos IMO. And this is a good example of what I'm talking about. When he starts with the light OD, the DG overdrive just isn't there. A hot passive pickup thru a real tube sounds much better (which is what I'm used to). The dirty setting sounds like some background static. At it's fuzziest I find it similar to EBS where it's like a layered scratchy sound added to your signal. It really doesn't sound like distortion to me. The Duality has actual fuzz and it's pretty tight, but it just sounds like a bad buzz box.
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I'm sorry, that is an abysmal demo. I don't mean that in a way that reflects poorly on the pedal, I mean the demo is terribly done. He talks for five and a half minutes (of a 9:50 video) before he plays a single note with the pedal on. When he does play, it sounds like he using a laptop microphone, his voice is way louder than the bass. I just can't hear anything, period. There's no way I would listen to that demo and think I had heard what the pedal sounds like. Especially compared to the video I posted above (by Will Davies of Attack! Attack!, a pro musician---I don't know who your guy is). In principle, a bad demo shouldn't outweigh a good one. If a demo shows a pedal CAN do something, then not hearing it in another demo doesn't matter that much.

I listened to your video...I would be really curious what your thoughts are on the Will Davies video. If you listen to that and still think the pedal has no drive or is transparent, then I guess we can just agree to disagree.
 
#72
P-oddz said:
^^^ I agree, that Blower Box sounded gnarly.
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I spoke to Matt at idiot box this morning and he said the two side knobs are for bass and treble, middle for gain and there's a volume knob on the side by the jack. Not only does it sound cool, it looks been cooler. This could be another high gainer drive for me. I know I'm getting one, just a question of when......
 
#74
andrew said:
I got to demo the Blower Box today. In front of my Brimstone it was frikkin huge and great sounding, Very cool on it's own too but the two pedals together were fantastic.



Blower Box is a winner.
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Glad you liked it bud! Yeah, I have to say I'm not disappointed with the Blower at all. I'd like to hear it with the Brimstone as well.

...oh yeah, the OFD is freakin fantastic!
 
#80
FaithNoMan said:
He has way too much clean blended in for my tastes. You can hear how loud his clean tone is over his dirty.

Probably not your thing, but I wind up making stuff that sounds very new wave-ish, and my Ric sounds cutting, but quite warm with my B3K. I love top-end grind(why I own a DG pedal and a Ric) but I also like warm mids over modern sterile tones. Many demos sound exactly like the one you posted, whereas I never seemed to get that tone.

Bass is in about halfway through:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
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seems like you're going for a Squire tone there. I hear exactly what you're saying about warm mids over sterile tones - the B3K sounds very sterile and digital to me. I'd say use a Marshall (or modeler) on the same track and see how you like it.

couldn't get the 2nd one to load. soundclick doesn't play most links for me anymore. maybe I should make a username and log in. nah, I'll pass.
 

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