dannybuoy

Take one for the team and let us know how it compares to the more expensive competition!

If this one is any good for £58 then we may have a contender! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOtTEvqu06g

I would've bought that Damnation Audio pedal a long time ago if it wasn't so unnecessarily big! Does sound great though, there are other demos out there... I find a lot of Excane's demos sound similar to each other and rather different to my experience playing through the same pedals - e.g. he makes the HGBM sound like a high gain monster distortion whereas I found it more of a mellow overdrive.

Their first pedal was a clean one!

Bandcamp offer downloads in FLAC which is a lossless CD-quality format... so download that and burn it onto one of those ancient disc thingies, and Bob's your uncle!

How anyone can offer an opinion about the pedal when it's not out yet and we've only heard 5 seconds of a crappy Instagram clip is beyond me!

The editor is up there with TC in terms of what you can control... I just couldn't find a light drive sound in there that could top my analog overdrive pedals.

Aftershock - some awesome heavy fuzz sounds (especially as a result of blending two modes in parallel) but all of the lighter overdrive sounds and the Darkglass clone models were mediocre in my book.

I'd avoid the CTM15. Yes it has a gain control which the 30 doesn't have, but the trouble is it's useless - it seems to be a treble boost rather than a volume boost! You can turn it up a smidge but anything higher just results in a really bright sound, and the EQ knobs don't do enough to counteract it. It does sound good with the gain low and master up high, but that's louder than most would be able to get away with playing at home. I'd recommend a VT Bass pedal or VT500 amp, or some kind of modeller if you want that tube grind at low volume levels or in headphones.

My block version is true bypass, I expect the older ones aren’t but I bought mine new about 3 years ago. Check reviews first, I’m sure I read one somewhere that said this pedal wasn’t as good as expected for some reason... Original sounds better to me here, somewhat thicker and warmer: (read comment by bumble yeti on this vid who agrees)

Chowny sounded the best there, but I'm sure the others would have shone more with different settings. As an owner of the FEA I know it can sound a lot better than that!

Lots of bassists use the MXR Analog Chorus or the Zak Wylde version too, since it has the same lo and hi filters as the Boss CE-5, which let you roll off the high end from your dry signal and the low end from the chorus signal. Just try as many as you can, most guitar shops have tons of them and you don’t need a bass specific one as even some of the guitar oriented ones mentioned above have bass friendly features.

Surprised you’re getting low end loss with the Two Notes, but then again I only ever ran mine in Cold Fusion mode, where blending in a bit of Channel A can give you all the low end you’ll ever need and then some!

Dunlop Super Brights!

Testing out the MP3 upload feature of the new site... This is a recording I did a while back of the BB1025X into the Cali Compact Bass into the M900 amp on B3K mode, with a bit of Phase 90 then Blower Box added at the end (it's a bit long so just fast forward!). Preamp out from the M900 into the PJB Bighead which I used as a USB recording interface. Will do a brief clip of how this sounds in a mix, and another of the P-Bass + Tonehammer at some point... ATM.mp3

@CRV, sounds like what you are describing is the EQ being before the gain / clipping stage. Easy to tell if this is the case by boosting the bass to see if it results in more distortion or not. I think the DHA has all the EQ post-distortion - which I prefer since you can boost the low end without overly bloating the distortion, and use the treble control to reign in the high frequency content generated by the clipping. As a different example, the SFT and Earthquaker Monarch have their EQ before the clipping. The Tonehammer as far as I can tell has the mids before clipping, and the bass/treble afterwards (which I think is the best all round approach!).

I keep the gain fairly low on the Blower Box too, it sounds shite otherwise! I like the Vintage, but not as much as the B3K/B7K circuit for my current sound. I'm using a BB1025X with both pickups on, which results in a scooped sound like a Jazz bass. Something about that bass combined with the B3K/B7K makes it slot right into the mix like a glove with barely any EQ adjustments. I find I have to tweak the EQ quite a bit if I flip the amp over to Vintage mode. Both Darkglass drives though have a similar characteristic where they let the low end through clean and uncompressed, just distorting the mids. Kind of like a solid state clean bass amp mixed in parallel with a distorted guitar amp. This works great for aggressive or dynamic playing styles, but sometimes you want the full range of the signal to be compressed and driven, making a sound like an old cranked amp pushing a speaker to its limits. That's what pedals like the Tonehammer and Bearfoot Blueberry do so well, it works great for more mellow slower numbers. The M900 amp can't really do that tone alone, but you can flip the Microtubes engine off and you have a clean transparent amp that you can then dirty up with one of the aforementioned units. Also have to give a shout to the Pike Vulcan - it's like a less scooped B3K and brighter more agressive Vintage crammed into a single box, with a blend knob between both sounds. In short it can approximate both the main Darkglass sounds and costs less than either one of them!

So in an attempt to answer the question 'if you could only choose one', the answer is 'it depends'... on which music style, bass and amp. If I'm playing classic rock / blues / R&B with my P Bass and flats, hands down the Aguilar Tonehammer for the warm wooly overdrive it gets with the AGS on. On the other hand, if I had a Tonehammer amp at my disposal (which I would probably buy if I had the need to play this stuff out more since it has a variable AGS control AKA the 'Drive' control) then I wouldn't need a pedal at all, but I would have fun working out which one paired the best with that setup (a journey I have not gone on yet). If I'm playing more modern rock with my Yamaha BB1025X and rounds, the B7K sound of the M900 amp is my core tone. So if I had no amp, or just a clean amp at my disposal, the B7K Ultra would be my one pedal. On the other hand, since I have an M900 for the core sound, that leaves a spot for another dirtbox... On the board I have a SolidgoldFX Beta for a warm vintage sound, an IdiotBox Blower Box for more aggression, and an EHX Russian Muff for full on sustain. If I could only take one though it would probably be the Blower Box.

I keep the deep switch off as it tends to add a lot of noise. I prefer to use it as a more subtle effect and use a phaser when I want a deeper swirl! With shipito they give you a US address to ship to, then for a $2 fee on top of the postage they will forward any parcel onto you. I've used it a couple of times, including a purchase from Mr Black! No idea when their promo ends but expect it will be any day now.

Only tried the Providence; I like it a lot but I haven't tried many chorus pedals to give a proper opinion. Mr Black is doing 40% off everything for Black Friday though! https://mrblackpedals.com/collections/black-friday-specials/products/double-chorus (Just remembered he does not ship overseas any more, but you could forward it with shipito.com and still probably make a saving over what it would cost over here)

Of the ones I've tried, I like the Cali 76 Compact Bass for general purpose transparent compression, and the Effectrode PC-2A for more of a warm tube preamp style of compressor that works absolute wonders with my acoustic fretless. Ones that didn't make the grade: - EBS Multicomp - the input kept clipping with my bass and playing style. Perhaps the newer Studio Edition has improved things here? - Diamond - lack of a ratio control and some unexplained buzzing when used with my Cioks DC5 power supply meant I had to move this on. - Keeley Bassist - seemed a bit dry and clinical and the attack time was set pretty fast for me - I like the peak to come through a little more before it clamps down. Would make a great limiter though especially as the ratio control goes up to infinity. - RMI Basswitch Dual Band - changed the tone pretty drastically compared to other comps, and the internal 9v-18v puts out a high pitched hum on the power line that gets picked up by other pedals if you don't use isolated power. The Spectracomp looks great if you mainly use one bass and want to set it and forget it. CRAZY amounts of tweakable controls in the editor app, and plenty of Toneprints to get you going, looks like a fun pedal for tweakers. I like to flick between different basses though and prefer something with basic metering and a threshold control for setting on the fly.

I agree a phase switch is essential - at least half the dirt pedals I've tried in a blender invert phase. SFT, Blower Box, Beta, even the Le Bass I think.

But ultimately, especially on the second hand market, buyers set the prices, not the sellers. Nobody will actually buy that used Yamaha for £780. He'll keep relisting it at lower prices until it sells, probably around the 400-450 mark (which the original seller could have got had he put it up as a buy it now item).

I use a Beta into the B3K mode of the M900 amp, they are a good pairing if your B3K is always on and you want a dirty boost with a big hump in the lows and low mids to kick in every now and then. It is very muffled though, probably the darkest overdrive pedal I’ve used! I bought this pedal when it first came out and sold it on as it was too much when paired with my dark sounding amp (Orange Terror Bass), but now I have a much brighter amp I repurchased it and it was just what I needed. The HGBM probably doesn’t lose any lows, but it does lack ‘heft’ compared to the Blueberry (which is probably boosting the low end).

'Crook'