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Understanding "Sag"

MrBKerth

MrBKerth

The Gypsy Bravado
Apr 20, 2013
726
210
Texas
scumpopband.wixsite.com
#1
Good afternoon Bass Brethren,
I found my 1 spot daisy chain torn to shreds this morning and thought it was a great excuse to grab a Pedal Power 2+. I've never used sag on any of my pedals before or even heard about it till I started researching this power supply recently. Anyways. I've got some effects that may be benefited by it, but I was hoping some of you might be able to share any personal experience you have starving any of the pedals in question.

Attached is a potato quality picture of my pedalboard (sorry I'm at work). I was considering using the sag outputs for the Blueberry BOD and/or for the Big Muff PI. The little micro pedal is a hotone roto sim. Any recommendations? Also, the Q-Tron is no longer on the board.
 

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#2
I don't have any experience with the sag output on that Pedal Power, but have built a "dying battery simulator" and experimented a bit with it. I personally found in most cases that I wasn't really finding any preferred tones over the what the full output was (at least with the pedals I tried). The biggest effect it seemed to have was on heavier drives/fuzzes. It was a while ago when I messed around, but I seem to recall it either essentially neutering some of the zazz of certain pedals, or making other signals a little "spitty". I didn't have much luck breaking any new ground or finding anything particularly incredible.

But hell, give it a shot. Maybe you'll find something you really like.
 
#4
I found that "sag" is only noticeable on very simple fuzz circuits. It makes them "grungier" or "crappier" sounding, in my opinion. With other pedals, it didn't change the sound, but some of the digital ones wouldn't turn on - not enough juice. From your board, you could try it on your drives... I didn't hear any difference with my Muff clones, but you might. I ended up just leaving those outputs on full 9V.
 
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#5
It is meant to imitate the effect of a pedal with a dying battery. Analog circuits will behave different with a "starved voltage", or "voltage sag". Depending on the pedal and how much sag you might find the tone sputtery, glitchy, pinched, saturated, etc. Or completely unchanged?
 
#10
Never used that on a pp2, though I should, but there was a pedal that did that. Like dwarfcraft? Iron something? Forget exact name but I returned it. Fine pedal if you like that sound, but I just never found a single use for it. And I tried it on every type of effect except for sure a phaser and maybe a bit crusher, but I'm not 100% on that. Best effect was on harsh fusses.
 
#12
Dojix said:
I've always found that sagging a pedal is like switching from your full rig to a tiny 10 watt combo. That essentially what I get from my Big Muff Pi, it loses a lot of the clarity to it and starts to sound like a padded 8-bit fuzz.
Click to expand...
For what I play, that's part of the draw of that pedal. My Aggie rig sounds fantastic with the lounge guys I play with, but the rock band I'm in sometimes calls for just an absolutely self indulgently trashy sound. Still, didn't hear much difference from sagging with the limited time I spent with it so far.
 

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