Immo

My buddy built me a COT-50 derivative tweaked ever so slightly for bass and I made it more ergonomic. It adds the tube-like drive, and more overdrive when boosted, even up to low-gain fuzz levels. It improves the sound of almost any other pedal after it. It would provide what you need, but you need to dial teh drive with Level knob and volume knob(s) on your bass, otherwise it's overdriving constantly. Of course there are diagrams for COT-50 clones that have a dedicated drive/gain knob. That's one idea I'd try. The other is Earthquaker Devices Blumes. It seems to fit your needs quite well.

Using it and my other dirt pedals I even managed to create a massive lo-fi bitcrushed doom sound, which is what I was dreaming of for a while now. Only tested it on headphones so far, and it sounded awesome, but I will push it through my amp's 15" speaker at my nearest convenience. Can't wait.

Now here's something quite different than your typical Muff-like/FuzzFace-like/ToneBender-like fuzz. Emma OKTO-NØJS. While most samples online evoke that funky and synthy stuff, I'm happy to say it dooms as well especially if paired with another dirt pedal. It's fun on its own, of course, but it shines in a company. I love what it can do when coupled with an octave fuzz and/or envelope filter. Of course it has its learning curve. Quality, fit and finish is great. It is also a looker.

Some assembly required.

I put Ernie Ball Bass Flats 2801 (45-105) on my Bronco and they busted the E-string tuner, but I think it was less from all the tension and more from finagling (I had experienced buzz and other issues that made me constantly tune, de-tune, tension and loosen the strings, until it snapped). Anyway, they play nice, but I wouldn't recommend them to anyone in doubt since they may cause problems.

First Bass Owned: heavily modded Lotos bass from Bydgoska Fabryka Akordeonów, which - when stock - was a peak bass to get in People's Republic of Poland. My modded example I got at a sorry state - it even had a replacement pickguard made of linoelum! Eesh. 'Go To' Bass: I'm most likely to grab my Bloomin' Bronco - a Squier Bronco that has stock wood and frets - everything else is deliberately swapped. 'Your' Bass: I'm torn between my Franken-Tele (a tribute to '70s Telecaster Bass II) and my TwinSplit (Encore E83 with two split-coils). Totally different sounds, but both are MY sounds.

Yeah, it's a nice instrument. Mostly good quality, though the tuners quickly died on me (one broke and fell apart and others became wobbly) and had to do a costly swap. And while I was at it, nut swap came as well - Tusq XL eats the cheapo plastic for breakfast. I swapped the bridge saddles for more stability, too. The rest of bits is fine. Frets are nicely rounded. Even the stock pickup wasn't half bad, but I wanted it to have more kick. It's a match made in... well, in some cool but formidable supernatural place.

Thanks! I was stepping on a narrow path, but I think I managed to pull that off. Wanted to try a matching pickguard and headstock thing for years now. I need to find a cool Squier decal or sticker to put on the headstock, though. I'm not ashamed of it being a Squier. Don't let it stop you. You can always do racing stripes with a wrap foil. I ordered a furniture decoration from a company that had great reviews on "resilience" and happened to have a perfect pattern on hand. Just asked them to scale it down for me and they did it an no extra charge. Here's a mockup I did in MS Paint before ordering (and deciding I will do the headstock, too) - as you can see the result is very close.

I found this weird thing - Musontek FurFur - when something tempted me to type "fuzz" into search bar of a local e-commerce platform. It immediately caught my attention do to its ridiculous looks, but I checked YouTube and was sold when a guy did nice Iommi with it and decided to chance it for bass. Turned out it is a wonderful general purpose fuzz with attitude and lots of tonal capabilities. It can be fine tuned from regular distortion to outrageous, screaming chugs. With a low gain OF before it it shines even more. It is tiny (think Mooer size), well-made (checked the guts, the PCB is nicer than in EHX stuff!), nicely packaged, and relatively cheap. Controls: FUR = Fuzz RUF = Volume (unity with clean signal at 9'o clock) L/M/H = voicing toggle (actually in a different order - I take it it's a 1-0-1 switch, so I'd argue the letters mean: L = Lancinate (bright), M = Muddy (dark), H = Heaving (medium); if the switch ever breaks, I'll substitute it with a rotary switch putting the modes in more intuitive order). It also has two easy-access trim-pots for BIAS and BODY on the side.

Thanks! To be honest, I fell for the stock Bronco in Tahitian Coral the first time I saw it because the color is just gorgeous and would look great with a floral pattern on the pickguard - so funky! But it quickly went from "funk machine" to "doom machine" since stoner and doom are my genres, and with the pickup that has a lot of oomph it turned out to be great for that purpose. It likes fuzzes.

Here is my doom machine I built a year ago. It's a Squier Sonic Bronco in Tahitian Coral, heavily modified and personalized, strung with Ernie Ball Bass Flats 2801. Such a fun instrument, easy to play and great sounding. And I think the customising work I've done made it quite a looker, too. Work done: - Swaps: Pickup to Seymour Duncan SCPB-3 "Quarter Pounder" (I had to attach an additional ply of MDF with threads to the bottom and add springs to make it adjustable) Tuners to Gotoh GB11W Nut to Tusq XL Bridge saddles to 3-slotted vintage ones I had laying around (don't know the make) string tree to Gotoh TB54 string retainer knobs to Hosco HK-MKF - Add-ons and personalisation: Fender Vintage Jazz Bass pickup cover in chrome custom order vinyl wrap on pickguard and headstock custom 12th fret "marker" done with ultra-thin vinyl wrap and GitD tape Fender Strap Blocks in Daphne Blue

It is a modified/personalized clone/upgrade of CoT-50 tweaked for bass. It's a booster and overdrive that saturates the sound and adds low to medium dirt to it. The level of overdrive is input-sensitive. The pots are Level and Sizzle (reversed bias for Boost mode). The toggle switches the LED color and toggles between no Boost (smaller lighting, blue LED) and Boost (bigger lightning, red LED); the rotary switch selects clipping between no added clipping (I), extra Schottky diode (II) or extra symmetrical pair of Schottky diodes (III). I is most low end and volume, least grit, III is the least low end and volume, but most grit, and II is somewhere in between. This thing does wonders with the rest of the pedals, adding more "scene" to the sound of other dirt pedals, also pushing them to more oomph, or, if they are properly dialed, gated and nasal tones. On its own it's also really cool, with warm, bluesey drive.

Back to the forum after a long while, I give you my current minimalist pedalboard after refurbishing the board itself with new Velcro and stuff, and putting the ever-faulty Polish Love and Polish Hate aside. Very doomy, but can also go quite funky, but that envelope filter will be replaced because it annoys me.

Re-arranged with new patch cables.

Many Encores of that era have magnets wrongfully installed - both coils have North facing the same direction. This creates hum. It is very easy to check - just get a magnet, hold it firmly and check if one coil pulls it and other pushes it away - if so, the pickup is OK. If both coils push/pull the magnet, the polarity is wrong. Easy fix, just use a screwdriver to gently pull one of the magnets out, flip it upside down and use a superglue to attach it back