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mooseherman « Versatile Bass Overdive »
Published on 11/29/10 at 12:29This is a bass overdrive overdrive pedal from Boss. It is similar in ways to a Boss DS-1 for guitar, but for bass. It does have a few subtle differences. It is a 100% analog pedal. It has no MIDI or USB connections and it is not rackable as it is a pedal. It does have a 1/4" input and output like most pedals do. It can run on a 9V battery or by power supply.
UTILIZATION
Editing the effects on this pedal is pretty easy. It has four knobs, one of which has two working parts. The level knob controls the overall volume of the signal. The tone knob has two parts, one for low end and one for high end. This helps maintain a lot of control over the tone of the bass, which is difficult to manage with some bass distortions/overdrives. There is a balance knob, which controls the balance between the dry signal and the wet signal, allowing for a significant amount of blend (and therefore not overdoing the distortion). The final knob controls the gain.
SOUND QUALITY
I am a huge fan of this pedal, because it has a lot of tonal variety to it. I think that the best sounds I got with this were with my P-bass, as it has the thick heavy low end necessary for such a pedal. The best thing about this pedal in my opinion are the EQs and the balance knobs. The eqs can control how much of the low and high end remain in the mix. The main complaint I often have of these pedals is that too much of the bass gets lost in trying to distort the signal. Another great way of avoiding this problem is the balance knob, which will provide the (already reasonably heavy) dry signal more room in the mix. I like this pedal because it doesn't annihilate the tone of the bass and amp you are using, just distorts it a little bit. It is rare that I find a distortion that can do this.
OVERALL OPINION
This pedal is really cool. I like the variety of tones you can get, and I really like how it doesn't color the sound too much. I prefer to use it on a lighter side, as a thick bass distortion is tough to hear in a mix and almost defeats the purpose of beefing up the bass tone. It's a good price and it competes really well with the pedals in it's price range. I highly recommend it to anybody who's been skeptical about bass overdrive in the past.
UTILIZATION
Editing the effects on this pedal is pretty easy. It has four knobs, one of which has two working parts. The level knob controls the overall volume of the signal. The tone knob has two parts, one for low end and one for high end. This helps maintain a lot of control over the tone of the bass, which is difficult to manage with some bass distortions/overdrives. There is a balance knob, which controls the balance between the dry signal and the wet signal, allowing for a significant amount of blend (and therefore not overdoing the distortion). The final knob controls the gain.
SOUND QUALITY
I am a huge fan of this pedal, because it has a lot of tonal variety to it. I think that the best sounds I got with this were with my P-bass, as it has the thick heavy low end necessary for such a pedal. The best thing about this pedal in my opinion are the EQs and the balance knobs. The eqs can control how much of the low and high end remain in the mix. The main complaint I often have of these pedals is that too much of the bass gets lost in trying to distort the signal. Another great way of avoiding this problem is the balance knob, which will provide the (already reasonably heavy) dry signal more room in the mix. I like this pedal because it doesn't annihilate the tone of the bass and amp you are using, just distorts it a little bit. It is rare that I find a distortion that can do this.
OVERALL OPINION
This pedal is really cool. I like the variety of tones you can get, and I really like how it doesn't color the sound too much. I prefer to use it on a lighter side, as a thick bass distortion is tough to hear in a mix and almost defeats the purpose of beefing up the bass tone. It's a good price and it competes really well with the pedals in it's price range. I highly recommend it to anybody who's been skeptical about bass overdrive in the past.