I've been using this once or twice weekly for almost two years, and it's become a permanent part of my rig. I play bass in a 3-piece mostly-instrumental surf/rock/exotica band, P-bass with Labella black tapewound strings through Seymour Duncan Quarter Pounders and an Acoustic 260 for smaller gigs, a Fender Rumble 500 for larger ones.
I keep the preamp on by default for my primary bass and it has a nice, almost Ampeg-y feel. Once it's dialed in, it cuts through the mix perfectly, allowing me to stay at a reasonable stage volume and still be heard out front.
When I switch to my secondary BEAD P-bass, which has GHS Boomers roundwounds and is much brighter but a little less hot, I ditch the preamp and switch to the Boost/Compression with both knobs turned all the way down, just to get a little extra volume to match my primary bass.
I use the Fuzz and Octave together for Bullwinkle, and it sounds just right for that classic driving bass line. On the gigs I don't want to bring the BEAD bass, I will sometimes engage the Octave to get the notes I'm missing on the songs that need (or at least sound better with) them. The Octave tracking isn't perfect, but it's about as good as my Boss OC-2 that I use with a different band, so I'd say it's more than adequate to the task.
I haven't used the extra FX sends or XLR output, just quarter inch in and out to the amp. It's compact, super easy to transport and set up, and it's never let me down. Great solid piece of equipment for a PT working musician, especially for the price. I'm almost tempted to get a second one, just in case.
H
Hector Manuel Padilla
★★★★★
Loving it
Loving this little guy, I don't use the preamp very much since I'm very happy with the sound of my amp, but fuzz, octave and compression is outstanding, the only issue in encounter is a high pitch sound coming from the amp if I put the tuner in the chain first, fixed it putting it after the boom ave and turning everything off if I need a quick tune
Frank Hostetter
★★★★★
Workhorse for small gigs
Good addition to gear box
Giovah Perez
★★★★★
No es lo Máximo. ! pero Resuelve!
DI BOX ES BUENO
EL FUZZ ES MAGNIFICO
EL COMPRESOR BOOST AMPLIFICA EN BUEN RANGO SONOIDAL
EL PREAMP EQUALIZA SUPER BIEN DE BIEN
PERO:
"LAS OCTAVAS NO ES MUY BUENO DEBERIAN MEJORAR ESA PARTE"
PARA LLEVARSE LAS 5 ESTRELLAS
LO USE PARA LA GUITARRA!! Y SONÓ BIEN
VOY A PROBAR EL XRL QUE ES UNA OPCION INTERESANTE....
EL PRECIO ES FENOMENAL
Y EL BRAND, EL EMPAQE ES SEGURO MUY NORMAL
Y EL SHIPPING ES RAPIDO! 4 ESTRELLAS PARA EL BIZCOCHO QUE SUENA!!
LA MUSICA DE DIOS SUENA SIEMPRE MEJOR.
GoD BLeSS
R
Ronald G.
★★★★★
Big Bang for the Buck, quibbles are minor
So far so good with this (have yet to gig with it, but it feels gig ready, and I've been inside it to do some mods; build quality is solid).
The good: the effects all sound good, and are simple to use.
Thoughts on the effects Individually:
The compressor is optical, and is pretty easy to dial in (one knob). It's a bummer the boost is tied into it, and that the boost is post-compressor. Further, there's no "don't boost" position of the boost control, so it's always adding around 3 or 4 dB gain to the signal. I suspect for most folks (me certainly), this will be on always, so it's probably not that big a deal.
The Fuzz is a good, middle of the road bass fuzz that nicely doesn't cut too much low end! I wish I could dial it a bit further back to be a mild overdrive, but it's definitely more of a fuzz/ distortion.
The Preamp is certainly trying to sound like an Ampeg, and it does a pretty good job of that. Nice range of tonal sweep, and the possibility to get a different flavor of distortion here.
The octave does one and two octaves down. The Octave 1 knob is a nice, solid, analog octave down a'la older DOD Octaplus or Boss units. I didn't care for the Octave 2, so I leave it off. Being analog, it won't track chords.
Overall, the unit's pretty silent in terms of switching noise (it's not true bypass; couldn't be with a DI), and I love the light-up knobs to reflect effect state. The power adapter (included) has a nice 3 meter/ 10' cord should you want to use it, and it also worked other power supplies if you want to use a something like a pedal power unit. There's no battery compartment.
Quibbles:
the effects send is full-normalled, so if you plug into this to feed a tuner or maybe run a 2nd amp, you'll kill signal through the unit (this can be remedied by a simple solder mod, see the pic, it's the small wire bridging the 2 solder points beneath the 2nd 1/4" jack),
and
the DI output is too loud--it's the same level as the 1/4" output, even though it's being fed from a dedicated op-amp (I wired a pad internally to the XLR to get the DI to be mic level). If you're really good with SMD soldering, you could change the negative feedback resistor to get a lower level. I, however, am not that good.
The knobs are (necessarily) tiny, and ringed by some clear surgical tubing that can make them a little hard to turn. The tubing can be removed easily if that's problematic.
The Dietsch
★★★★★
Perfect for a DI fly rig or for a lightweight multi effect unit on a budget! It likes guitar too!
This is def a working bassists pedal. It easily hangs with my Sans Amp Bass Driver clone as a DI (there are both XLR and 1/4 outs - yay!) plus it has the added feature of having not just a Preamp section but Boost/Comp, Fuzz, and Octave fx on tap as well. It's both a very cool multi-fx unit in front of an amp and great to just grab when I know I'm going to be using an unfamiliar amp on a backline or the beater at the rehearsal space. It's also PERFECT a solid stand-alone DI rig when I want to leave the amp at home if I'm gigging with a band that is using IEM's.
I played around with this a bunch and I think the best thing to do with this pedal is to use the Preamp section to set up my general tone profile and then set up the other sections after as they interact with each other in a lot of ways and depending on how the Preamp is set the Boost and Fuzz can get messy if you're being thoughtless with the gain and tone.
There's a lot of versatility in the Preamp section and even a fair amount of drive available so I recommend starting with the tone controls on the lower side of the dial because they're pretty responsive even on the lower settings. It's a feature I like but it's easy on this pedal to dial in loads of bass or highs and mids so a heads up not to overlook the sweet spots here!
The same goes for the Fuzz section - it's Muffy and wooly and cool, so turn up the sustain and tone knobs up a bit at a time because I found many of the best tones on this are at around 9-12. After I've set up my pre-amp tone then I hit this section so it interacts the way an amp would. I suppose you could treat them as two different pedals in front of an amp but I felt the pedals played better together using this way of going about it because the gain stages played better together like this.
Next I set up the Boost/Comp and this effect is exactly that - a big old boost with compression. My fav setting is a boost that has just enough compression to give me the sustain I want to push a line up in the mix a bit without too much distortion. You can actually get loads of compression out of this section and it's WAY quiet even when being pretty aggressive with the comp - plus this section is super fun for chicken picking on guitar lol :)
Now the octave section on this is the reason I didn't go with a five-star review. Is it usable? Yes - but it doesn't track well enough on my bass on the low notes to give me the synthy sub octaves I personally want with an octave unit on bass. BUT, you can however get perfectly usable sub octaves that sound great up the neck if the settings aren't dimed and the 2nd lower octave is used sparing (this is two octaves below - no option for a low and high).
This leads me to to the other great thing about this pedal that has been mentioned but I'll cover it again...
This pedal is a blast on the guitar too! That synth suboctave thing I was talking about? The fuzz and the octave sections are magic on guitar and using them together I can get really close to the Blue MXR box thing with this pedal and it's sooo fun. The comp section can do chicken pickin or it can be set up for a super sustainy boost. You can even use the preamp section as a drive pedal of sorts in front of an amp - it's not gonna give you a fly rig DI vibe but more like a cranked Super Reverb kinda thing.
So don't forget that while this pedal is fun and functional for bass it's also equally as useful for guitar!
S
Steven Martinez
★★★★★
Better effects out there
I had high hopes for this.. Even for $99.. Some effects are cool like the preamp. Fuzz is ok. Octave sounds muddy.
Rich Y
★★★★★
Five pedals in one; great for bass and really great for guitar
I have a P-bass that I used to play in a band with about a decade ago, but it hasn't seen much use since then. That all may change now that I have this pedal.
I wanted to get some basic effects to make bass playing fun again, but I didn't want to have to sell a kidney or take out a second mortgage to do so. Pedals can be insanely expensive, so I wanted a multi-pedal that was quality but inexpensive. After some research, I found this pedal, and I am glad I did.
It has octave, preamp, fuzz, boost, and a compressor. It like a nice space-saving brick with four sturdy push buttons, which is great if you need to save space on your board or just don't want to have a billion different cables and power cords. The more simple I can keep my rig, I find the more fun it is and the more I want to play.
Right out of the box, I noticed it was in quality packaging, not like some of the other stuff I order from China. That is always a good sign and bodes well for the brand. It comes with its own power supply which is actually UL rated surprisingly. Most pedals I order from overseas don't even come with a power supply at all. It also has a helpful guide as to what all the effects and buttons do if you are not familiar with pedals yet.
I first tried out the boost, and really dug it. It's like a nice clean boost that easily gives you 10 to 20 db. I also like that it is a simple one knob. I next tried the compressor, and was pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting much at this price point, but the compressor actually worked as well as other units I've had that were more expensive. The more you turn up the knob, the more it evens out your sound so that soft and loud playing are at the same level. Very useful for bass.
The fuzz is pretty wicked awesome, and is probably the most fun effect. At lower levels, it gives you a nice vintage "Spirit in the Sky" type sound, and it higher levels, it sounds very metal or hard rock. Good versatility overall.
The preamp, I've got to say, is probably worth it alone. It really gives a nice color to the town, it is like an on-board EQ. Plus you can also add gain; something I found very useful. The preamp really improves the signal and warms it up a lot.
The octave effect was also very fun to play with and, I think, quality. You can do one octave below or two octaves below. It's nice that it has a mix knob as well.
Perhaps the biggest surprise to me, was how awesome this pedal sounds with my guitar. I have a metal/shredding type guitar, and I hooked it up to this pedal just for the heck of it to see if it would work. Man, was I blown away! I almost feel like they should market this is a guitar pedal instead since it is equally suited to both. The boost and comp work awesome on my guitar, and the fuzz sounds decent. The octave is also good on guitar, but the preamp perhaps is the best. I could dial in a really killer classic rock type of sound using the preamp section.
TL/DR: Great build quality and great sound and effects at an affordable price. Very versatile and great for bass or guitar. Would definitely recommend.
