This is 99.9% of all that matters 
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overdrive, distrortion and fuzz refer to different kinds of circuitry. they donāt sound the same and they donāt feel the same to play.
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Just aproposā¦ very recently from BassTheWorld:
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Overdrive and distortion being different is a good thing to point out and I should stop referring to the Battalion as overdrive as I am pretty certain itās a separate distortion section and is not overdriving the preamp itself. It can act like overdrive in one of the modes but it is pretty much a separate blendable distortion, especially in the dry eq mode.
The Ampeg SCR-DI is the same with its scrambler section, but it doesnāt work nearly as well or as flexibly.
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yes, an overdrive is designed to force distortion from the first gain stage of a tube amp. itās something very common in guitar amplification, way less with bass amps.
anyway an overdrive circuitry clips by itself. itās called a soft clipping, somewhere between a hard compression on the edge and a distorsion. there are circuitries designed to push the first gain stage without actually adding their own distortion : boosters. I have a lot (love them on guitars) but I never found a nice use with basses so far.
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@terb My son has a Vox AC15 that sounds kinda bland at low volume but sounds amazing at higher volume when the tubes are being driven. The problem is, he canāt play that loud at his place without causing problems with neighbors. If he gets a boost pedal would that let him get the great sound from the tubes being driven but be able to play at lower volume?
I love the Vox AC15 (my main amp being a boutique version of the '63 AC30) but itās unusable if youār just noodling in your appartment ā¦ itās incredibly loud.
He could maybe look for an AC4 (I have one too) but even at 4w itās pretty hard to manage with neighbors.
I think the best solution for real low-volume Vox tones is to get a good modeling amp sim. I used my Pod HD500 for this, worked great. it sounds way better than an AC* at low volume.
To answer about the booster : a booster would crank the input stage so heāll get some distortion, but the low volume will make the power tube sound pretty bad. it wonāt work so well overall.
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If someone is looking for a nice, warm, vintagey overdrive that isnāt too extreme, I just saw this one and it has some interesting sounding tone.
They also have a more āextremeā version.
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@terb, @howard, @eric.kiser, and all you other gearheads: looks like it is going to be a great summer for yāall
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Yep. Iām looking forward to that!
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oh awesome!
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Here is what I just found in one of my old treasure boxes ā¦ the first official Electro Harmonix Effects Sampler DVD ! which are a lot of demos and explainations about EHX effects. I think this DVD is pretty rare, I had it at the time because I knew very well the guy who imported all the EHX products in France.
not sure this thing is copyrighted, so I think I will rip it and upload it 
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Oh cool!
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after a long conversion and upload ā¦ here it is !
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Do you have any idea what year thatās from?
thereās no date on it, Iād say very early 2000ās
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Here is a pedal that a friend just gave me as a gift. Itās a custom pedal he created from scratch just for me, with a unique picture (tribute to Converge , a band we both love) engraved into the metal with an acid bath. Itās an ABY box.
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Nice! I was just listening to Converge actually.
Love the buttons.
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What a nice friend! Adding the artistry to something so functional makes this pedal a serious winner.
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