I have been using an Aphex Punch Factory and a Swollen Pickle with my band for a few months and I decided that somewhere between my clean, compressed tone and my fuzz tone, I needed a gritty but still largely clean-sounding tone. The Pork Loin fits the bill for this perfectly! While I intend to upload clips later, I figured I'd go ahead and post a review now. First I'm going to break down WHAT the controls do because there's a lot going on here, and I really had to chew on it a bit to figure it out.
The controls on the surface are pretty easy to figure out. Tone is a low-pass that works on the OD side, and Curve seems to affect "where" you hear the OD in the spectrum. Isolating the OD versus blending the OD with the clean sound can radically change how you would set the Curve control. Then there's the Clean control which is really just an independent volume for the British preamp side.
What's inside is, IMO, essential to making this pedal optimized for bass. The Filter control affects the clean side and seems to me to be a high-pass filter. I think the factory setting is intended for guitarists, the cut the lows out of the clean side and let shimmering clean highs come through mixing with low frequency overdrive. But my approach for bass grit is not like that--I want a clean bottom end with overdrive sitting a little above that. So I opened the clean low frequencies wide. The Drive Mix is obvious, unless you want a really clean sound. Presence, I think, benefits somewhat from being turned fully clockwise. The overdrive seems to "deepen" but it's subtle to me.
I have settled on these settings: overdrive at 11, tone all the way up, curve at 12, clean full up, presence and filter inside full up, and drive mix full up like the factory setting. This yields a tone very similar to my clean tone but that is A) a little "fuller" as a result of the nice-sounding preamp and B) has a bit of hair on it, leading to a less pristine and grittier tone that should cut through a little better. If you roll the OD off, then go back 11 o'clock, you can clearly tell the difference, but if you keep the setting at 11 for a long time and play you'll get used to it fast. It's subtle--which is perfect.
The controls on the surface are pretty easy to figure out. Tone is a low-pass that works on the OD side, and Curve seems to affect "where" you hear the OD in the spectrum. Isolating the OD versus blending the OD with the clean sound can radically change how you would set the Curve control. Then there's the Clean control which is really just an independent volume for the British preamp side.
What's inside is, IMO, essential to making this pedal optimized for bass. The Filter control affects the clean side and seems to me to be a high-pass filter. I think the factory setting is intended for guitarists, the cut the lows out of the clean side and let shimmering clean highs come through mixing with low frequency overdrive. But my approach for bass grit is not like that--I want a clean bottom end with overdrive sitting a little above that. So I opened the clean low frequencies wide. The Drive Mix is obvious, unless you want a really clean sound. Presence, I think, benefits somewhat from being turned fully clockwise. The overdrive seems to "deepen" but it's subtle to me.
I have settled on these settings: overdrive at 11, tone all the way up, curve at 12, clean full up, presence and filter inside full up, and drive mix full up like the factory setting. This yields a tone very similar to my clean tone but that is A) a little "fuller" as a result of the nice-sounding preamp and B) has a bit of hair on it, leading to a less pristine and grittier tone that should cut through a little better. If you roll the OD off, then go back 11 o'clock, you can clearly tell the difference, but if you keep the setting at 11 for a long time and play you'll get used to it fast. It's subtle--which is perfect.
