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EHX Bass Battalion - Love it!


funkydoug
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hi folks,
I thought I'd share my experience with the EHX bass battalion with you. I haven't seen many reviews of it online at all and it seems to exist below the radar of many folks looking for their preamp-DI-drive-comp-box, so here goes...

First things first, as the title suggests, I love it. There a few reasons:
1) It is solid and sturdily made - as one would expect for one of these things. Easily in the same ball park as the rest, despite being quite a bit more affordable
2) It clean section simply sounds great. The main things to notice about it are that the 4 band EQ has a shelving bass that kicks in at 200Hz on the bass end. This is different to most (all?) others in this category both in that it is a shelf not a notch / peaking EQ and the frequency; 200hz is way higher than most other bass knobs! the closest I've seen is the VT bass @ about 120hz, while most are at or below 100hz. That's a significant difference.
The mids are low-mid @280hz and high-mid @750hz but they miss out the zone of honk (at about 500hz) meaning, in my experience, you can add some heft in the low mids and / or some bite in the high mids without the honk-factor. The treble end is smooth, glassy and ... erm ... nice!
3) the drive section is also really flexible, and can go from barely there bite / sizzle to full on distortion. It is way more flexible, and subtle, than the branding would lead you to believe. I sold a lovely vintage drive pedal because this does everything I want in one box in that regard. I was pleasantly surprised by this, didn't really expect to like the drive section much at all (I bought it mainly for the clean+comp)

now .. I didn't say it's perfect...

The compression end of things is fine for me, and does what I want from a comp, in fact it does subtle comp as good as my ears can hear, but that's about all. If you want something more technical / more demanding from your comp, then I would not expect to get it from a one-knob job like this, and that does seem to be the case here. Keep it subtle though (in an always-on kind of way) and the comp does a really nice job. For the compression anoraks ... the comp comes before the drive and EQ, so if your forensic analysis shows a roll off of anything you are only the twist of a knob away from addressing that ... but I can't hear anything missing from the tone.

The noise gate... bit of a novelty as the pedal itself is quiet and the gate seems to be ... basic... but I just do't use it.

Bells and whistles: It drives headphones really well so makes practicing with 'your tone' very do-able.

All in all, I think it is highly under rated. The paint job and the price might lead you to think its a bit of a toy, or that its a bit 'rock', but I have been very pleasantly surprised.

Hope someone finds this useful!

Doug.

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[quote name='funkydoug' timestamp='1507750950' post='3387787']
hi folks,
I thought I'd share my experience with the EHX bass battalion with you. I haven't seen many reviews of it online at all and it seems to exist below the radar of many folks looking for their preamp-DI-drive-comp-box, so here goes...

First things first, as the title suggests, I love it. There a few reasons:
1) It is solid and sturdily made - as one would expect for one of these things. Easily in the same ball park as the rest, despite being quite a bit more affordable
2) It clean section simply sounds great. The main things to notice about it are that the 4 band EQ has a shelving bass that kicks in at 200Hz on the bass end. This is different to most (all?) others in this category both in that it is a shelf not a notch / peaking EQ and the frequency; 200hz is way higher than most other bass knobs! the closest I've seen is the VT bass @ about 120hz, while most are at or below 100hz. That's a significant difference.
The mids are low-mid @280hz and high-mid @750hz but they miss out the zone of honk (at about 500hz) meaning, in my experience, you can add some heft in the low mids and / or some bite in the high mids without the honk-factor. The treble end is smooth, glassy and ... erm ... nice!
3) the drive section is also really flexible, and can go from barely there bite / sizzle to full on distortion. It is way more flexible, and subtle, than the branding would lead you to believe. I sold a lovely vintage drive pedal because this does everything I want in one box in that regard. I was pleasantly surprised by this, didn't really expect to like the drive section much at all (I bought it mainly for the clean+comp)

now .. I didn't say it's perfect...

The compression end of things is fine for me, and does what I want from a comp, in fact it does subtle comp as good as my ears can hear, but that's about all. If you want something more technical / more demanding from your comp, then I would not expect to get it from a one-knob job like this, and that does seem to be the case here. Keep it subtle though (in an always-on kind of way) and the comp does a really nice job. For the compression anoraks ... the comp comes before the drive and EQ, so if your forensic analysis shows a roll off of anything you are only the twist of a knob away from addressing that ... but I can't hear anything missing from the tone.

The noise gate... bit of a novelty as the pedal itself is quiet and the gate seems to be ... basic... but I just do't use it.

Bells and whistles: It drives headphones really well so makes practicing with 'your tone' very do-able.

All in all, I think it is highly under rated. The paint job and the price might lead you to think its a bit of a toy, or that its a bit 'rock', but I have been very pleasantly surprised.

Hope someone finds this useful!

Doug.
[/quote]

Cool review! I'd love to try one.

[quote name='The59Sound' timestamp='1507792556' post='3387916']
Would you say the OD section compares to another EHX overdrive pedal? Or is it more Muff like?
[/quote]

I think I read somewhere that it uses the same circuit as the EHX Glove, which is excellent news if true - I used to own a Glove and it sounded wonderful. I only sold it as the lack of clean blend meant I could only use it at low gain settings before losing some low end. That shouldn't be a problem with the Battalion though!

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[quote name='funkydoug' timestamp='1507750950' post='3387787']
... The mids are low-mid @280hz and high-mid @750hz but they miss out the zone of honk (at about 500hz) ...
[/quote]

'The zone of honk' - my nomination for quote of the year!

Nice review, thanks.

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[quote name='Cosmo Valdemar' timestamp='1507813224' post='3388139']


Cool review! I'd love to try one.



I think I read somewhere that it uses the same circuit as the EHX Glove, which is excellent news if true - I used to own a Glove and it sounded wonderful. I only sold it as the lack of clean blend meant I could only use it at low gain settings before losing some low end. That shouldn't be a problem with the Battalion though!
[/quote]
Same! My experience with the Glove was very similar and I wanted to keep it so much.

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