OK. After the thread that introduced this pedal to us, I developed a very bad attitude about both the pedal and the thread. Upon reflection, I realized that was irrational, and that the only way to form a real opinion would be to buy one and try it out. The vendor has a 10-day return policy, so I figured worst-case scenario I'd be out about $12 in postage. The pedal costs $230.
Here are some sound clips:
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Sorry (once again) about the lame aimless noodling. The signal chain is just fretless P bass with flats --> Jettergear --> sound card, with no other processing. There's a sort of whistling sound in the high gain clips which is actually an artifact from the MP3 conversion, it's not there in the original signal.
I've spent a few hours with it now, so here's my review so far:
It is an extremely bright-sounding overdrive. I kept the tone knob rolled back between "off" and 10:00; any higher setting was harsh, too bright, treble-y, and hissy. Although the noise level when the tone is rolled back is actually a lot less than many other OD/dist's I've tried. There are a wide range of OD "flavors" packed into this small box. The variety is controlled by a Gain knob, a switch between hard and soft clipping, and a switch between two levels of gain staging. The OD voicing is quite rich and complex, very "natural" and not the usual gritty buzzing noise I have come to expect from most dirt boxes. It's hard to describe what the range of tones is at all the various settings, but let's just say you would normally need two or three different OD pedals to get this variety. Although it is possible to set this for a spectrum of subtle OD levels, it really doesn't sound good to me in that range. The subtle/medium settings don't have that "beefy grit" like a tube amp just breaking up, they just sound like weak-to-moderate distortion on top of a clean signal. Where this pedal really shines is in the "violin tone" singing lead sustain distortion. Boy, it sounds nice in that gain range. I had expected to enjoy the not-so-heavy-handed settings more, but this thing really delivers in the realm of lead guitar type fully saturated distortion. Really smooth and rich and singing. Another thing I discovered is that it only delivers the full low end... on the highest gain settings! I certainly didn't expect that. Sadly, it does lose a LOT of low end on all of the more subtle settings, especially in the "soft" clipping mode. Because it emphasizes the high end with the tone knob anywhere above 10:00, it can also become extremely twangy and nasal. That might be cool for some random tune, but not much for my taste. I did run it in the loop of my Xotic X-Blender, and blending in some clean bass did of course help this pedal out a lot. However even that way it really never gets as "fat" or "gutsy" as the Pigtronix or Frantone pedals I like... unless I crank up the gain.
In short, this pedal has a surprisingly wide range of tones for such a small box. Unfortunately, IMO only a small fraction of those tones actually sound good on bass. OTOH, the extra-high-gain bits that do sound good, sound freaking awesome. Awesome enough to be worth $230? ...hmmm... Jury's still out on that one. Having a clean blender helps, but I would really prefer to be able to get value out of more of the range of possible settings, and the whole lead-guitar-distortion sound is not all that useful for bass "in the real world".
I'm probably going to email the builder and ask some questions about modding or future bass versions, but odds are this pedal is going back. It's too bad, though, because those violin tones are damn sweet.
Here are some sound clips:
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Sorry (once again) about the lame aimless noodling. The signal chain is just fretless P bass with flats --> Jettergear --> sound card, with no other processing. There's a sort of whistling sound in the high gain clips which is actually an artifact from the MP3 conversion, it's not there in the original signal.
I've spent a few hours with it now, so here's my review so far:
It is an extremely bright-sounding overdrive. I kept the tone knob rolled back between "off" and 10:00; any higher setting was harsh, too bright, treble-y, and hissy. Although the noise level when the tone is rolled back is actually a lot less than many other OD/dist's I've tried. There are a wide range of OD "flavors" packed into this small box. The variety is controlled by a Gain knob, a switch between hard and soft clipping, and a switch between two levels of gain staging. The OD voicing is quite rich and complex, very "natural" and not the usual gritty buzzing noise I have come to expect from most dirt boxes. It's hard to describe what the range of tones is at all the various settings, but let's just say you would normally need two or three different OD pedals to get this variety. Although it is possible to set this for a spectrum of subtle OD levels, it really doesn't sound good to me in that range. The subtle/medium settings don't have that "beefy grit" like a tube amp just breaking up, they just sound like weak-to-moderate distortion on top of a clean signal. Where this pedal really shines is in the "violin tone" singing lead sustain distortion. Boy, it sounds nice in that gain range. I had expected to enjoy the not-so-heavy-handed settings more, but this thing really delivers in the realm of lead guitar type fully saturated distortion. Really smooth and rich and singing. Another thing I discovered is that it only delivers the full low end... on the highest gain settings! I certainly didn't expect that. Sadly, it does lose a LOT of low end on all of the more subtle settings, especially in the "soft" clipping mode. Because it emphasizes the high end with the tone knob anywhere above 10:00, it can also become extremely twangy and nasal. That might be cool for some random tune, but not much for my taste. I did run it in the loop of my Xotic X-Blender, and blending in some clean bass did of course help this pedal out a lot. However even that way it really never gets as "fat" or "gutsy" as the Pigtronix or Frantone pedals I like... unless I crank up the gain.
In short, this pedal has a surprisingly wide range of tones for such a small box. Unfortunately, IMO only a small fraction of those tones actually sound good on bass. OTOH, the extra-high-gain bits that do sound good, sound freaking awesome. Awesome enough to be worth $230? ...hmmm... Jury's still out on that one. Having a clean blender helps, but I would really prefer to be able to get value out of more of the range of possible settings, and the whole lead-guitar-distortion sound is not all that useful for bass "in the real world".
I'm probably going to email the builder and ask some questions about modding or future bass versions, but odds are this pedal is going back. It's too bad, though, because those violin tones are damn sweet.
I hope to get clips of the Gain Stage posted tomorrow night.
