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Distortion and overdrive pedals that are not Darkglass or Tech21 etc


fretmeister

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On 29/07/2022 at 01:08, admiralchew said:

One of my all time favourites is the Damnation Audio MBD2. I recorded sound samples for three people and they all went and bought one (which is saying a lot as my playing is terrible). Joespedals has them in occasionally. I’m not sure it can be said to not get attention though as it was reviewed by Hondo Felder on YouTube: 

 

 

My favourite at the minute is the Nightowl Parabellum v2. It’s a Nightowl Edison tube preamp and a Dunwich designed distortion. It’s one of the reasons I’ve put several pedals up in the classifieds. I’m not sure they’re on NOI’s website at the moment but I think the manufacturer is selling on Reverb at the time of writing.

 

 


I also picked up an IdiotBox No Moon recently and that’s crazy, it houses a Big Muff, Rat and Tubescreamer and they all run in parallel, rather than series. I’m a Star Wars nerd, which is why I bought it (and why I’m looking for Cog pedals), but it’s actually good. That makes sense though as the IdiotBox Blower Box is also renowned (and apparently about to be supplemented by a deluxe version).

 

 

A shame about the guy in the last video having such a an ultra scooped muddy wet fart of a clean tone with no definition or articulation whatsoever, which just makes the demonstration overall sound muddy and farty, no matter how he sets the controls or blend the 3 parallel dirt effects this pedal features.

 

I am really left non the wiser of how that pedal actually sounds, cause I am quite sure it doesn't sound like all muddy wet fart no matter how you use it, like this guy makes it sound like.

 

I do though get a feeling that it would probably work better with guitar anyhow.

 

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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1 hour ago, fretmeister said:

 

 

I'm liking this a lot!

 

 

 

It's digital though, for what it is worth, but really high resolution/modeling quality, and it does give it the advantage of being far more flexible than any analog pedal could possibly ever get, in fact extremely flexible, first of all allowing you to chose for a quite big library of popular distortion models, as well as a couple of unique ones, and for instance allowing you to blend two different distortion models in parallel with each other (say a Proco Rat and an EHX Metal Muff), each respectively with their own separate parallel clean blend, with it's own fully adjustable LPF, as well as each of the two distortion models respectively will have their own separate really flexible (for instance optional Pre/Post dirt and a fully adjustable HPF) EQ section, or you could have one of the distortion models be a light tube like overdrive, or even completely clean signal, instead, that you then would be able to shape with the dedicated EQ section, exactly to your liking, and then additionally you also get a flexible master EQ as well for the summed signal.

 

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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1 hour ago, fretmeister said:

 

 

I'm liking this a lot!

 

 

It was a commercial decision for me. I could either keep buying single units from the market place on here for £50-100 until I found one I liked in a gig situation or buy a brand new Aftershock for £150 which would probably have a bunch of them in there already plus loads of other stuff. 

 

It's more fun than a bag of squirrels on speed. Very giggable with editable presets and a WYSIWYG mode as well if you want to fiddle on the fly.

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40 minutes ago, fretmeister said:

 

Just tried some demos on YT.

Sounds great but the sideways form factor won't work on my Nano board.

 

Definitely one to think about if I ever got back to a bigger board.


 

I see! I used it on my nano for years. I flipped it sideways and put my compressor underneath. Together, they used the same amount of space as a Shiftline/Sansamp preamp. I sold my Zvex to buy another drive pedal and boy, do I regret that. I used the Zvex as a set-and-forget OD and for that purpose it was lovely.

 

My second suggestion would be the Mad Professor Amber Drive (for bass, which is available on their website). It sounds huge and is easy to dial in.

 

The WM Smalls Pork & Pickle would be a great compromise as well since it serves as a drive and/or fuzz.

Edited by Owno
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5 minutes ago, ped said:

If you want a nano size check out the EWS Stormy Bass Drive. Very clever little thing 👍🏼

I doubt it get any smaller than the Joyo Orange Juice I suggested, it's like same width as standard mini pedals, but almost just half as long (though the HoTone pedals are actually even ever so slightly smaller than that again). 

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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3 hours ago, fretmeister said:

 

 

I like that.

 

Has a nice raspy quality to it.

 

It's a really nice overdrive/distortion pedal for bass, with a pretty wide range of tones and levels of overdrive/dsitortion.

 

But I don't think that demo really does it justice, however it is the only really bass specific one on YouTube properly featuring it.

 

And I would personally not call is raspy either, that is an entirely different much grainier and raunchier quality to me, I would call it grindy though, which is a much clearer/colder, somewhat biting, type of aggressiveness (or that is it has a tendency to get grindy on higher gain settings, and can even get extremely grindy, depending on the specific settings, if one should wish so, which is a type of distortion character that I personally really like for bass, but it is also capable, and even great at it too, of just providing a subtle tube like grit, which I also use it for).

 

 

Edited by Baloney Balderdash
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14 minutes ago, Cuzzie said:

One man’s raspy, is another man’s raunchy

 

@ped are we getting into sticky territory with what’s allowed to be said in forum - it’s getting me all hot….

Maybe you need to plug into a big muff

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