Blue Berry Bass Overdrive

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Blue Berry Bass Overdrive

Postby nad » Tue May 29, 2007 12:57 am

Hi, I wrote this some time ago on TalkBass as part of a 3-way comparison, which can originally be found here:

http://talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=296888

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This pedal seems very basic, but a few things to note makes it more mysterious. Most importantly, it's expensive and nearly impossible to find. Second, even though there are only 3 knobs, it can be quite difficult to find what you want! The Tone control is a bit different in that while the center position is flat, rolling back adds lows but rolling up decreases highs (and maybe adds some mids, can't quite tell). Even in the center position some bite is missing, but otherwise much of the signal is retained. Finally, it's eerily heavy and you can't see what is going on inside, spoOoOoky! The Drive and Tone controls are very dependant on each other, and changes to one might mean chasing your sound down with the other. The manual recommends high settings of Drive dictate low settings of Tone, and vice versa. Most of the time, this is a good rule of thumb to go by when experimenting with tones. This pedal takes a lot of time to adapt to using, but the rewards of a natural, real sounding overdrive are very much worth it.

Samples:

Tone flat (center), Drive low
Very natural sounding drive, the original signal is preserved a lot at this setting even with a little roll off on the high end.

Tone flat (center), Drive cranked
With the tone flat, even with the Drive dimed it is still quite mellow, but...

Tone low, Drive cranked
This is where the cheese of this pedal is. I'm still not quite sure how the tone control works exactly, but this is the way to get the most overdrive out of it, and it sounds magnificent.

Also I made extensive use of the pedal for two of my songs, found here:

http://www.boogeresque.com/DoomDemo2007 ... _March.mp3
http://www.boogeresque.com/DoomDemo2007/Spoonflank.mp3

Cheers,
Adrian
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Postby Donner » Fri Jun 01, 2007 11:38 am

excellent overview Nad !!!! just what we needed...thanks
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