Distortion on active basses

[simonbrown92]

I’ve always struggled with a decent distorted tone when using my active basses, I’ve got a Spector rebop 5 string and an Ibanez SR2600, and they both sound like they’re being water boarded when I step on my boss ODB-3. My Ibanez can switch between passive and active and sounds great in passive. I’ve read threads on hear about impedance issues and radial dragsters being the fix, problem is they seem to be discontinued so my question is does anyone have an alternative solution? Do I need to change pedals? Is there an alternative to the dragster? Does anyone have one to sell?

 

 

cheers 

[itu]

I have not used Dragster, although a pedal maker said that such units may not work well.

 

Better alternative is to find a distortion that works with your basses. I tested several pedals after I found that not every pedal is functional with every bass.

[jazzyvee]

Not sure if the principle is the same for bass as it is guitars, but where goes. I had the same issue with active guitars and distortion pedals. In the end I found the solution to be using a valve based distortion pedal or the dirty channel of my valve guitar amp. I ended up buying a Radial trimode which works great.

[Cosmo Valdemar]

I'd say, try a different pedal. The ODB-3 has its place but bass distortion has moved on in leaps and bounds since. It's a very fizzy pedal so might not play well with an already bright and aggressive bass.

I'm a massive Spector fan, always have been, and I've always thought they sounded best distorted. I certainly never play mine without some overdrive!

There's no reason for an active bass to not play well with a distortion pedal, unless the output is particularly high - thinking about it, if your Rebop has the original non-adjustable Tonepump preamp it could be overloading the pedal...