EHX Bassballs - what was EHX thinking? (modified Bassballs)

[mcnach]

I had a love/hate relationship with my first Bassballs pedal.

Actually, it started with a Behringer clone. The VB-1:



This looked a lot like the old BassBalls and is based on it. I found it interesting but a little bland. I got tired of it rapidly. Then I read reviews that essentially said that Behringer's take one the Bassballs fell off the mark... and one day I ended up with a EHX Nano Bassballs. And I really liked it! Definitely nothing like the Behringer.

When reading reviews on the Behringer, I also came across pedal modifications. People have often opened up their Bassballs and tweaked the two internal trimpots, which control the two filters, to taste. Aha! I opened the Behringer and there was only one trimpot. I was able to tweak it to enhance its sound. Cool. But it was still a little bland. I sold it.

A while later I sold the Bassballs too, as it did not seem to have a place in the music I was playing at the time and I did not really use it.

Fast forward a year or so... and a situation came where I thought "oh, I think a Bassballs here could be pretty cool", and I bought another EHX Nano.
It was ok.

Then one day, I came across someone selling a modified Bassballs, the older version in the large box, where the internal trimpots were now accessible from the outside via two extra knobs!
I went for it... and I wa so glad I did!
The Nano started to languish, unused, as the modified one was just sooo much fun. The general sound is the same, of course, but you could get the sound just right with the three knobs, getting the right amount of whump and waah and weee and gurgle.

I still used the Nano, because it was a lot smaller and fitted better in my board... but I often used the modified one, running on batteries (they last forever on this pedal!), without a pedal board. Lovely quirky pedal.

The Bassballs stock is... alright. You could open it up, tweak the trimpots to taste and leave it there, and get a great sounding pedal. But because the sound depends greatly on how hot your bass signal is etc, it seems a bit silly to leave those controls with such awkward access. Having them easily accessible on the top of the pedal allows you to get a few extra great sounds too, very very easily. I am sure they would have sold a lot more of these pedals if they had these controls outside.

What were they thinking? Why did they not come out with "Bassballs II" or something with this modification?

The nano version is a bit tricky to modify, sure, but the original is dead easy. Lots of room!

I have just found a modified Nano, which I received today
The modification was made by SFX (probably known to many in this forum), and it looks great... I spend nearly an hour this morning playing with the Nano alongside the old version modified one... and I am pleased to confirm that they sound identical to me. The modified one sounded so good that I was a little afraid that something had changed when making the Nano and could not be made to produce the same sounds... but it does

It's a quirky pedal, it's not a pedal to use in every song... but it's a great sound to have.

Long live the Bassballs!

And here is a picture of my balls





a quick and dirty clip just using a hand held ZoomH2 recorder:

[url="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38169404/Pedals%20to%20sell/STE-035.mp3"]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38169404/Pedals%20to%20sell/STE-035.mp3[/url]

[Bigwan]

For even more pedalboard space try the mooer sweeper. It's a bassballs clone.