The MXR suboctave bass fuzz has become a mainstay for me.
Very extreme, very sawtoothy.
6 Likes
Thanks! That thing sounds pretty awesome.
1 Like
I like the Blumes, but I’m not sure it’s what you’re looking for, @eric.kiser .
Just have a listen 
4 Likes
What I’m looking for is the gnarliest, meanest, dirtiest, angriest, junk yard dog, with one blind eye, and mange, of a distortion pedal.
I want my own brain to think, “Dang, this is flat out uncalled for. No one should do this.”
I want, post apocalyptic, hell scapes, and the doomiest, grungiest, facets of an alien mind sent to torture the synapses of humanity with a reflection of thier own worst impulses.
Um… okay… I might have gone a little far with that. But, you get the idea.
I thought stacking drives would be the answer, but I’ve run in to the problem where it starts to flub out before it gets to what I want.
In doing some research, the flub, seems to be caused by a combination of EQ, and the signal overdriving the next pedal in line, past the point of what it was intended for.
Can anyone confirm what’s going on? @terb maybe?
(I figure others will be able to answer. This is a, not so veiled, attempt to draw Laurent into the conversation, since I haven’t seen him around for awhile.)
6 Likes
Oh, you should have said…if you can, check out the plasma pedal (in person) and see if it fits the sound you are after
the main drawback for people seem to be price and some don’t like its natural gating function (thou that can be really cool if it suits your playing), but it has a no holes barred type of electrical distortion which is really cool
sound can be shaped from an industrious growl to a high-pitched electrical bumblebee, offering a wide array of uses. The sound is unique and instantly discernible from other fuzz and distortion pedals. The only drawback might be for those who do not like a noise gate and the fact that the tones all land on the extreme side of electrically infused distortion.
https://guitar.com/features/the-genius-of-the-gamechanger-audio-plasma-pedal/
2 Likes
I hear what you’re saying here.
It might need a guitar amp.
Here’s what I do when I want supreme distortion.
I run my bass through an ABY box.
I can switch from amp to amp or both.
If you have a distortion pedal in front of a nice amp that you like the distortion on, it goes sooooo big.
It’s a much better way to exponentially distort the sound in a way pedals sometimes can’t handle.
I just did some recording and I layered SO MANY basses.
The regular bass sound, than another 2 passes through a massive Marshall stack, sometimes with a tube screamer in front.
I’ve never had more fun making bass noise.
4 Likes
That sounds like huge fun! Do you have any samples of the work?
I think that might be part of the problem. I’m trying to do this with headphones.
1 Like
@g13dip Thank you. I looked into this pedal, but that’s some substantial money for something I’m not sure will work
2 Likes
It sounds like you’re saying I need a 5150. Thank you for this excellent advice!
2 Likes
I hear you…thats why I mentioned trying the pedal in person…if you have a retailer that offers 30 day returns you could give it go, or try to find a 2nd hand version that you could sell at about the same money if you didn’t like the sound
it is an outlay for sure
p.s. the xenon tube is the coolest thing to look at on any of my pedals, a slightly irrelevant feature on a sound device perhaps but still so very cool
4 Likes
I have one @eric.kiser and it’s insane! It’s like psycho distortion, but a very different distortion. Hell of a lot of fun but very specific
3 Likes
This is the kind of thing I would spend double to buy even if it was on a tuner or something
6 Likes
the gnarliest distortion pedal I ever had by far was this. sounds good and a lot of fun. also 100% NOT my sound 
2 Likes
Yes!
But I don’t have the ability to share them yet.
Mixing and engineering the recordings still, and I don’t have access to the raw files.
I’d share if I could!
2 Likes
Maybe try a compressor that’s working pretty deep before each distortion. Make a nice brick to feed into the shredder. I’ll bet you have something $99 and purple as an extra. If you have something with a high pass filter, maybe try that at the end of the chain set to 40 or whatever the cabinet can handle. Effects can generate unwanted nastiness outside the range of the speaker that could flub.
2 Likes
seeing as how i have been kicking around this idea in my head for literally YEARS now, i figured what the hell. just bough an ipad air M3 (wow what happened to the days of $100ish ipads) and an ik irig interface. for the pedalboard part i will start with built in garageband effects, and will probably also grab bias fx (which is available as an ipad app and pretty affordable to my surprise) and probably also upgrade at some point to logic pro for ipad (which is also surprisingly affordable and getting really good reviews). we’ll see how it all works.
5 Likes
I’m in the penciling some ideas on a napkin for a build like that once I get done with a portable board. I might scrap that idea but I’ve got a bunch of pedals sitting in a drawer already. Just need the board and a power supply. I’m looking to use some kind of midi foot switch to control effects through Logic on my iPad.
1 Like
btw i asked @howard guys at kilohearts if there was any plans to port their plugins over to ipad like others have done (ie bias fx and a few others). that would be so great but unfortunately they have no plans as of now.
i’m not sure what you want your setup to be but i saw one cool device that allows you to input your physical pedals by usb.
1 Like
ahh bummer!
1 Like