jessiesdad

First off, you will quickly realise that I'm a bit of a nonce when it comes to overdrive or distortion effects pedals. About a year ago I bought a Behringer BOD400 overdrive and after playing with the darn thing at home for a few weeks, I concluded that 'it' was not capable of producing any interesting sound with my Fender Jazz. So it was consigned to its box. I certainly wasn't going to embarrass myself with it at a rehearsal. This week, having read/watched some reviews of the EHX Bass Big Muff, I bought one, thinking that maybe it's 'distortion' that I'm looking for. Well, a day of experimenting with that led me to a similar conclusion and - worse still - that the pedal was faulty as it would only produce any hint of fuzz (and not particularly pleasing at that) with the 'sustain' (harmonic distortion) knob wound up to near maximum. Some of you already know where this is going. Well, it was back to the stomp box shop, where the extremely nice and patient guys successfully tested the unit hooked up to a passive bass (like mine). Of course the BBM sounded bloomin' gorgeous, with warm fat fuzzy tones. In answer to one of their questions, I said that I 'always' played with the amplifier volume set at 6-8 (the gain, similar) and the guitar volume at about 3 or 4. Their polite suggestion was that I might like to try to switch around the two volume settings. Of course, a whole new world has since opened up and controllable distortion is the name of the regime. Not only will I be letting all this loose on the guys at the next rehearsal but I am wondering what further delights are in store for me with the overdrive pedal. If you haven't tried one of these BBMs before, you have to experience the 'dry' setting. Beautiful!