Hijacking this slightly-recent thread a little rather than making my own. But recently I've been wondering to myself what I would like to see if there were a BDDI v3.
I've tried to sort-of temper my 'expectations' as it were, even though I have no actual Expectation that it would be happening at all! No reason to believe it is coming (unless T21 feel like surprising me with a nudge-nudge wink-wink ofc).
The 'tempering' more-or-less takes this form: As much as I would like "Programmable"-style switches and functionality on a normal BDDI-sized box, the mechanically moving pots are something I have to assume would use up too much space for that form factor. My thinking, then, would be that I think I would really enjoy a 'channel' switch, and I think a switch where the channels are only two separate Drive pots rather than whole separate EQ sections would be enough for me, too.
The other thing that would make this an insta-buy for me would be an effects loop. I've actually wondered before about the feasibility of modding an extra input jack in before the XLR out as a 'return', and using the ordinary Output jack as the 'send'. But I'm very very confident that would be beyond my own capabilities!
One thing I'm NOT really concerned about would be a VTDI-style speaker sim defeat function. I'm definitely in the camp agreeing with T21 that the sim sounds great through a real cab anyway. But, if it were in there, it's not like the option would upset me, and it'd open up options for people.
So, in short, what I want is represented by a few products that T21 already offers...
PBDDI: No loop, but the programmable presets are very very cool. My biggest concern with this is that the Mid pot on the BDDI seems very useful even though I do indeed trust T21 when they say that bass and treble adjustments are worth using to adjust mids.
BD Deluxe: It's the PBDDI, but with an effects loop (and multi-instrument if needed)! It more or less ticks my boxes, with the aforementioned mid pot caveat. But another caveat is that it's out of production; Reverb listings don't seem unreasonably rare, though.
Bass FlyRig 2: I think that, frankly, this thing more-or-less answers every ask I have and way more. It seems like an extremely good piece of kit. My nitpicks with it are almost petty, really. 1: I would prefer to lose some of its features if it meant having a normal SansAmp form factor. 2: I really think that black and yellow is earnestly such a cool and, dare I say it, Legendary look!! It's a very petty thing but it is honest-to-goodness a thing that is hugely appealing to me about the BDDI.
Rambling done now though. I know there are a lot of other options out there outside of the SansAmp realm, nowadays, that scratch many if not all of my particular itches as outlined here. But I really love the BDDI sound in every single demo I've experienced and the simplicity of it is hugely appealing. I am very very into how the BDDI seems more-or-less impossible to get a bad sound out of.
