What's the deal with effects and pedals? (Also: sound in general)

[howard]

For recommendations, probably the three best options I have found that I liked most were:

EBS ValveDrive - fantastic tube character, nice Fender-circuit EQ, great overdrive
SansAmp VT Bass DI - this thing just sounds amazing. Solid state, but still adds a very tube-like tone, lots of presence. I absolutely loved mine, until I destroyed it accidentally
Any of the Darkglass. I owned a Microtubes X which I liked a lot, but not the preamp version with full EQ. The Vintage Microtubes, B7k, X7, or Alpha/Omega in their preamp versions would be worth checking out for sure. I own a sim of the VMT and B7K Ultras, and it’s amazing.

I start to document my love affair with the ValveDrive here:

Tubes

EBS arrived. It’s a super solid, heavy, huge pedal. Sounds good so far. It’s going to take a lot of fiddling to find the exact tone I want but it’s definitely there with a lot of tubeyness. Clean bass: EQ flat (mids maxed, bass/treble min): EQ noon (huge mid scoop): Gain was noon for those. here’s a little more gain and in vintage mode: Really saturated and starting to overdrive in that last one. Lots of tube compression too. Will take some playing around to find settings I like bu…

It’s one of three pedals I have left