Saved by Bearfoot

[DocRock]

Well, I've been gigging with an Aiken Sabre since July. This is my favorite rock amp by far. Unfortunately, I was loading out of a rehearsal studio last weekend, slipped on the ramp (which was wet from rain), and dropped my amp a good two feet into the bottom of the push cart I had been using. So, my trusty amp has been sent back to Randall Aiken to get fixed up.

I had rehearsal for an upcoming gig today, and I was stuck. The Aiken is my only gigging amp. I remembered I had bought a Crate Powerblock about 6 years ago, and it's been in the trunk of my car (as insurance) pretty much ever since. It was a $100 solid state investment should I ever find myself in this very situation. There is nothing special about the tone of the Crate other than it doesn't exactly suck for what it is.

In any case, I ran my regular rig (minus the Sabre head) at practice today. I basically was stripped down to my Linhof Tele-style, the Crate Powerblock, and my Petersen 212 diagonal cabinet with Celestion Heritage G12-65's, plus 2 pedals: Bearfoot Emerald Green Distortion Machine and Bearfoot Baby Pink Booster. I'm just astonished at how good and "convincing" my tone was with this stripped-down, tubeless set-up. We were running tunes from Led Zeppelin to Soundgarden, Aerosmith to Tom Petty; and it all worked, just by varying pick attack and volume settings on my guitar. I ran the Crate clean, and just did the rest with these 2 pedals.

I have to say, all things considered, I was actually pretty happy with my tone. While I do look forward to getting my amp back, I feel like I could do a gig with this set-up. The EGDM gave me a very chewy, organic sound with a good amount of "give" to it as I hit the strings. The BPB is just a pedal that I think everyone should have. Regardless of what I'm using, that one is always there, getting more use than probably any other pedal I own. The buffer does a great job of fixing up that cable capacitance-induced tone suckage. When it comes to leads, the BPB sounds just like somebody walked over and simply turned up my amp a notch. It's like being punched in by the soundman minus the soundman, LOL.

Anyway, I just wanted to share. It's so cool when stuff works out, and I'm glad that I was able to produce some really great sounds for not a lot of money, relatively speaking.

Anybody else using the EGDM>BPB combo?

[thesjkexperience]

The BPB is one of the few Bearfoot/BJFE pedals I have never tried. I haven't found a clean boost I like yet so I never gave the BPB a shot since the RRB before noon (on the knob) was not a sound I liked. Between 1 and 3 o'clock is a different story! Still, I prefer my very second BJFE for boosting which is SBEQ #23 which has a custom buffer in it made by the master himself! When I go for boost I prefer the control of the EQ especially for slide where I turn the bass up for a huge ROAR! #23 at 9 Volts just has that dirty, greezy sound of a wide panel tweed.

My first BJFE is a EGDM and that can not be beat either. It has such a wide range of distortion/OD as well as such a wide, and useable, tone tweakability. Since I usually run a smaller amp I am thinking of dropping all my non-fuzz dirt except the EGDM on my board. I am experimenting with going stereo so starting with the Strymon Mobius I am in stereo through the Flashback and Supernatural then 2 different SBEQs. To make life simple I wanted to get another early SBEQ so I know what I am sending to the amps. The Bearfoot SBEQ I have sounds good, but still the tone and the knob position is very different from the #23!

[DocRock]

Yeah, there will undoubtedly be variance between same-model pedals when it comes to knob position, etc. As many here know, I was a long-time BJF guy from early on. I find that I can get all the tones I loved with the Bearfoot pedals. The knob settings may vary here and there, but my ears still know when I've arrived.

I actually use SBEQ (on all the time) into my BPB at the end of my chain. My favorite aspect of SBEQ is how it just wakes everything up. I could probably start a different thread on this, but SBEQ is the consummate problem solver for me. For example, I've found myself gigging in rooms where I felt my amp was a bit too strident on the top end, but turning down the treble on the amp almost cut too much life out of the sound. Enter SBEQ ... I leave my amp where I normally like it set (most knobs around 12:00), and use the treble knob on the SBEQ to dial back some of that harshness ... voila! Amp is softened just enough, but the basic tone and clarity is still there. As has been posted elsewhere, the knob parameters on SBEQ are in between where most amp eq knob parameters tend to fall. I've found that SBEQ can fix things where trying to do it with the amp itself can be frustrating.

Now I think there should be a new SBEQ thread, LOL.

[Your name here]

^ I agree and use it much in the same way. Actually, I have several BJFe's that are on all/mostly all of the time. My PGC and SBEQ are always on, with rare occasions of turning off the SBEQ for a cleaner sound when using humbuckers. I'm 90% a single coil guy. I also have a fantastic buffered RRB that I run first in my chain, which fixes tone suck and is used to slam the front end of my drives (MG, BBOD, EGDM) and my amp (a Morgan AC20 Deluxe). I run my BPB last, purely for volume boost.

If I could have one wish, I'd actually want a SBEQ with a touch more headroom. I run mine at 18v and still get more hair than I'd like, when going for a clean humbucking sound.

I also would love a SBEQ Deluxe that was just two SBEQ's in one box, as I like to tweak it when changing guitars and tend to bring two guitars to the gig. Or one could be set for single coils and one for humbuckers... But maybe that's just me. I guess a second SBEQ would work the same. It wouldn't be as cool as a Deluxe, though. Lol.

[DocRock]

^ I agree and use it much in the same way. Actually, I have several BJFe's that are on all/mostly all of the time. My PGC and SBEQ are always on, with rare occasions of turning off the SBEQ for a cleaner sound when using humbuckers. I'm 90% a single coil guy. I also have a fantastic buffered RRB that I run first in my chain, which fixes tone suck and is used to slam the front end of my drives (MG, BBOD, EGDM) and my amp (a Morgan AC20 Deluxe). I run my BPB last, purely for volume boost.

If I could have one wish, I'd actually want a SBEQ with a touch more headroom. I run mine at 18v and still get more hair than I'd like, when going for a clean humbucking sound.

I also would love a SBEQ Deluxe that was just two SBEQ's in one box, as I like to tweak it when changing guitars and tend to bring two guitars to the gig. Or one could be set for single coils and one for humbuckers... But maybe that's just me. I guess a second SBEQ would work the same. It wouldn't be as cool as a Deluxe, though. Lol.

Actually, I think that's a pretty neat idea. It could be a 2-stomper (one for on/off, the other to toggle between your two different SBEQ settings).

[Hulakatt]

DonneR could get sucked into a whole line of Deluxes with the SBEQ's. I like em before and after dirt depending on what I'm doing and they sound awesome with just about everything I've tried.

SBEQ and a HBOD? BAM! Awesome.
SBEQ and a fuzz face? BAM! Awesome.

it just keeps going...

[Your name here]

True.