Review: Electronix Submarine

can't wait for the clips

 

those sounds pretty cool. do you think you could try do some clips without the sansamp?

 

its cool. i just know the sansamp to color the tone too much. whenever you have time to do a rec would be great. im still working on funds to purchase.

 

Performance report:
I was doing some recording at studio yesterday for a gtr/producer bona fide tone snob. One of the several reasons he calls me are for my unusual selection of basses and tones; Pv T-40, Verdine White, Dyna 5, Carvin LB-50, Gibson g-3, the Stink Ray and my fretless basses. On top of the basses I usually end up trucking over many of my effects and preamps and such because he likes to experiment. Some of those signal chains become pretty complex Plus he has a Manley Vox Box that we often use as a bass preamp, and I gotta say that is one piece of gear I have major lust for.
Yesterday we were using the Dyna 5, Verdine, G-3 and the StinkRay-on all of those basses we wound up using "just the Submarine, please" he wuz really diggin' that little yella box. The Submarine was giving each bass just the right low, low mid presence to sit well in the tracks and the right upper mids and highs for clarity. It was a fairly dense mix of gtrz, B-3 organ and IMO too loud drums, but my basses came thru well enough to pick up the tonal nuances of each bass.

 

I tried the ElectroniX Messdrive. Just wasn't quite for me. Solid pedal. But I would say that they have to change the battery changing situation. Having to take the whole back off is a pain. Plus when I took the back off my Messdrive just to have a look I pretty much stripped the screws. IMO stompboxes need a battery compartment where tools are not required.

 

If I only have large machinery, proper equipment and necessary skills to cut through the metal and install a battery compartment.. I guess no boutique builder does. I always think of the battery inside as a backup, which may only be required if I have a power supply problem during the gig or practice.

Thanks for the coolest reviews and sound clips by the way!

 

Thanks for the explanation. I understand about the metal cutting and agree with your point of view of the battery as being back up.

 

And, FWIW, it's true that the vast majority of boutique pedals do not have a battery door. Nearly all of them use the exact same sort of housing and the exact same sort of battery arrangement.

 

After reading all of the posts and listening to sound clips, it is still not clear to me what the Submarine does that the tone/eq controls on an amp or preamp can't do. Can anyone clarify that for me? Certainly the reviews are great as is the price, but the question that I have is what will this thing do for me that I can't already do?

 

This description appeared in another thread regarding the ElectroniX Submarine:

"1. When the tone knob is turned all the way to the left, frequency curve is downward-sloping from left to right.

2. When the tone knob is turned all the way to the right, the frequency curve is upward-sloping from left to right."

That description matches the way I would describe the "Timbre" control on a Thunderfunk amp.

Has anyone had an opportunity to determine just what this pedal does?

 

See below

 

Electronix Submarine is a JFET based preamp, as it is advertised.

- You can use it before a PA as a preamplification stage
- You can use it to restore gain drop after certain effects
- You can use it as a direct input device just before the mixing console
- You can use it to give some punch to your amp
- You can use it after overdrive type of effects to add some low end to your signal

and most certainly you can use it where you think is a good place and appropriate for a preamp

Most people seems to think that submarine beefs up their sound, adds a warmness and smoothness to it, enhances the low ends or clarifies the high end and is just useful as a regular preamp would be for some situations and settings. Some people claims gain structure is somewhat similiar to vintage specs. It isn't a tone control, it has a tone control.

I attached the freq/gain graph to this message to ensure better understanding.


Now what's inside..

Submarine is inspired from an older mesa all tube amp's preamp stage. Basicly the design consists of 4 building blocks:

in -> pre-gain stage -> buffer stage -> tone stack -> gain stage -> out

Pre-gain stage: helps you to control signal amount that is fed into the circuit. this part is important to control the overall clean output. As of today, I haven't seen any instrument with extremely hot output that overdrives the submarine, however, if it does you will have a solution for that.

Buffer Stage: controls signal amount before amplifying it through gain stage, lower the impedance of the magnetic pickups and do some filtering. the output signal of the buffer stage is very close to unity gain and has a total impedance of 100K or lower.

Tone Stack: helps shape the signal to a common EQ curve that would be percieved as musical and warm. Also the tone control is located here.

Submarine is designed to cut some lower mids to a certain point or in other words it cuts some of the freq.s, which are known as the rhythm guitar frequencies (around first 3 strings of the guitar). This allows submarine equiped bass rigs to sit rather nicely in a mix with rather louder signals without disturbing guitar's channel per say. However, the higher mids, trebles and lows are boosted to get a higher clarity out of the masive bass signal.

Gain stage: A non-inverting amplifier that is capable of boosting the signal up to 7-8 dB depending on the EQ shape.

I always like the gain characteristics of a vacuum tube. It sounds more natural and more musical, IMO. Other than that, I always hated ICs (particularly opamps in that case) when it comes to musical applications. The closest solid state preamp to the vacuum tubes should be designed around JFETs.

I hope this answers many questions about what submarine really does

Happy Holidays everyone!

 

I use the Submarine to make switching basses an easier and quicker thing, but you could also use it to make quick tonal changes. My main basses, Carvin LB50, already have the volume and tone I am looking for but I also like to use other basses, a SVM Fretless Jazz and a Gibson G-3, that have a lower output and benefit from the boost & tone tweakage of the Submarine.

 

I'll tell you what the Submarine does --- sounds freakin' great! I bought two - one for me, one as a present. Now I'm considering purchasing an additional one as a back up. Not that I think it may break, but just in case it's lost or stolen.

You will not be disappointed in this pedal unless you think it will make you play better.

My uses:

1) Keep it flat and it seems to make the bass more musical.

2) Roll the tone toward treble and use it as a slap setting.

3) Roll the tone down a little for fingerstyle warmth.

4) Roll it down all the way for great sounding dub.

I would love to have a dual submarine pedal. On/off switch and channel switching. I'd use it for slap on one channel and fingerstyle on the other. The only thing missing would be a DI.

My single gripe is that the LED is too bright. I know it's done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it's a little too much and I wonder how much it drains the battery.

The pedal rocks!