Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just picked up this pedal last week and man does it sound sweet with my rick and SVT rig. I use it to add just a hair of breakup at a more reasonable level than if I was only running the SVT alone. It provides a vintage style OD that's nice and smooth. I find alot of other distortions can get kinda harsh sounding in the high end. I think I've finally achieved my ideal tone and it feels pretty awesome. So if anyone is looking for a dirt pedal I couldn't recommend this one enough. A bit pricey but well worth it in my opinion.

I roll off the tone control on my bass when I run through my BBMπ to contain the harshness, sometimes I will roll it all the way down as the OD creates high end of it's own from the square wave spikes it creates.

I run my bass wide open with this pedal. It's not harsh at all. It's nice and smooth and punchy in the mids which is how I like it. People say it rolls off the lows quite a bit but I haven't found it to be that bad really. I have the lows set to 1-2 o'clock on the pedal and if i go past that it gets kinda boomey (for my tastes anyways). It's got me wanting more pedals though haha. I think I'll probably end up getting a BBMpi next for a doomier all out distortion. The muff'n I leave on pretty much all the time to get a little tube saturation at more reasonable volume level.

Awesome, I was wondering about that pedal. Are those settings you mention for when you use the 4001 or the 4003? Notice any differences when you play the 4003 in normal non-vintage mode?

The BBMπ is nice in that with the selector switch in the Dry position you can add just a bit of grind/grit/edge to the unaffected bass signal. Even in the Normal position with the Tone control at around the 2-3 O'clock position I get all the bottom end I need.

Blackstar wrote:Awesome, I was wondering about that pedal. Are those settings you mention for when you use the 4001 or the 4003? Notice any differences when you play the 4003 in normal non-vintage mode?

I haven't tried it with the 4001 yet since that bass needs some work done to it so it's temporarily retired until I get her cleaned up and fixed up. As for sound differences between the vintage and non-vintage mode yeah there's a pretty big difference. When I play in vintage mode I roll off some of the neck pickup volume and I get a very Geddy Lee ish type tone. With normal mode I just run everything wide open and find I get a tone in the neighborhood of David Ellefson on the Peace Sells album but with more grit and saturation (and uniquely rickish obviously).

I'd say vintage mode helps emphasize the breakup more due to the added treble content. In normal mode it's a little more subtle. I have to dig in harder for it to become really obvious that I'm running OD.

My original plan for this pedal was to run my bass in stereo and only run my treble pup through it and then each pup would get it's own channel on my amp but it sounds so awesome with both pups going through it and with the channels bridged on my amp that I haven't really bothered even trying running it in stereo.

it sounds pretty awesome with just the neck pup soloed too. Gives a really warm and creamy vintage P bass type sound.

jps wrote:The BBMπ is nice in that with the selector switch in the Dry position you can add just a bit of grind/grit/edge to the unaffected bass signal. Even in the Normal position with the Tone control at around the 2-3 O'clock position I get all the bottom end I need.

Yeah I've been looking at a few different fuzz pedals and I'd say that the BBMpi is probably gonna win out. I'm also kinda looking at the new MXR Bass Fuzz Deluxe but I find that fuzz to be too grindy and trebely. I haven't seen any really good demos of it though so I'm not 100% about what it can really do. Hopefully the local music shop has one in stock I can try out but I'll probably end up getting the BBMpi. I love the lo-fi muff type fuzz.