Distortion, fuzz, OD or otherwise "dirty"

[Si600]

I know that this is opening myself up to all sorts of answers, the most likely being "whatever you prefer" but..

What distortion, fuzz or OD pedals would anyone recommend? I want something that is middle of the road, not an OTT thrash metal sound, not that there's anything wrong with that, nor a light overdriven cab sound if that makes sense?

TBH I was put off using dirt by a chap in a shop in Northampton who said something along the lines of "We don't call it distortion. I normally throw people out of the shop who say that, and you don't use it on a bass anyway." when I was an impressionable teenager...

[LiamPodmore]

Marshall Jackhammer is an incredibly versatile OD/Dist pedal, and rather cheap too. It'l do all the sounds you mentioned and more, definately a good baseline to start with in terms of dirt, and maybe like me you'll love it and keep it. Mine was only £21 off ebay.

Liam

[RandomProddy]

Depends what sound you're after and what the other instruments are in the band you're playing in (if there is one). You can usually get a fuzz/dist/od to any sound you want - the real question is where it would "sit in the mix" - compared to the guitar, say.

As mentioned - Jackhammer is good. I have a Boss MD-2 and a HM-2 for craaazy-heavy stuff. Still haven't found a mild overdrive that works well...

Edited June 18, 2012 by RandomProddy

[Sibob]

You're entering into a whole new world lol. The quest for the ultimate fuzz/overdriven sound is like the search for the holy grail. There's also a fairly big difference between fuzz and distortion, although some pedals do blur the line.
Fuzz wise I've been having great results with m CoPilot FX Orbit, but thats quite specialist, I've got a Fuzzrocious Grey Stache on the way, but again, quite full-on.
Overdrive/distortion is actually harder I think, the only pedal I've genuinely felt is perfect is my Sonic Kitchen BassBoost Preamp (made by Al Heeley on here), it's a copy/clone of the Xotic BB Preamp....so that might be a good place to start.

It really is about trying as many as you can and deciding from there, it's all so dependent on your bass, amp, cabs, ear etc.

Good luck
Si

p.s.
I have a Boss Bass Overdrive for sale in the FS forum, but that's more of a blendable distortion really. Again, a good starting point perhaps.

[Si600]

Excuse my ignorance, but what does "blendable distortion mean"?

[RandomProddy]

[quote name='Si600' timestamp='1340021053' post='1697652']
Excuse my ignorance, but what does "blendable distortion mean"?
[/quote]

Mixing in the distorted sound with the original sound.

Edited June 18, 2012 by RandomProddy

[xgsjx]

Blendable means you can mix some of your clean, unaffected bass sound with the dirt sound. So if you find you're losing low end, blend is your friend.

[Sibob]

Yes, sorry, I was a bit vague.
Some effects allow you to control the amount of your clean bass signal that is mixed with the effected signal.
This can work well with Dist./Overdrive/Fuzz because you sometimes lose attack and low-end.

There are arguments for blending, as well as against, where people simply prefer to find a pedal that they like the sound of straight off the bat, rather than relying on having to blend in their clean sound.

Si

[Mikey R]

I would recommend experimenting with mixing and matching. Im currently playing around with a couple of Tech21 character pedals in a parallel configuration to simulate biamping, with one being driven by a ProCo Rat. Its very similar to Sibobs blend, but its blending two slightly driven tones rather than one distored and one clean.

Yeah, distortion is a very personal thing, all the Tech21 pedals can do a nice mellow overdrive or a heavy crunch, but getting that middle gound proved tricky.