Fulltone Bass drive Mosfet

All Those Yesterdays

For the few bass players on here. Just wanted to give a brief review of my latest purchase. Fulltones Bass drive Mosfet.

I bought mine through Fulltone as a blemished model (Full warranty) for $140. I’ve only used this for one rehearsal session so far. Wow typical Fulltone, this this is built like a tank. On this occasion it was a Peavey day. So I used my Peavey Axcelerator through the Peavey VB-2 225 watt all tube head through a Ampeg 6x10 cabinet.

This pedal finally covers the low end of the bass. It seems to stay consistent with the amount of drive all the way up the neck, which for those of you who have tried in the past, know this is extremely difficult. I set up the basic overdrive to have just a touch of drive, than the boost side to have a little bit more break up, which is about all I need. This pedal has the ability to provide an obnoxious amount of drive, so don’t be scared kids!

All in all this pedal gives a nice break up evening from the lows to the highs, and really doesn’t seem to color the tone in anyway. Now I’ve only used this pedal for a little bit (haven’t messed with all the settings yet for more than a minute or so), so there is way more left in it. In all so far I’m extremely happy with this purchase.

I’m sure Monday at the next rehearsal I’ll pull out the P-bass for the session and see how perfect the world will become! If there are major developments while playing with the pedal some more or playing it through the other bass’s (jazz, jaguar, T-40 etc…) I’ll keep you all posted.

I still stand by Fulltone, everything they release is simply amazing.

ScrapeMySky

Congrats! Would love to hear more about it when you get the chance to play around with it a bit more. I'm looking into bass overdrives right now myself because I'd like to replace my old Big Muff which is not even the bass model.

All Those Yesterdays

ScrapeMySky wrote:

Congrats! Would love to hear more about it when you get the chance to play around with it a bit more. I'm looking into bass overdrives right now myself because I'd like to replace my old Big Muff which is not even the bass model.

I know how that goes. Year's ago I bought that Boss Bass drive pedal when I was young and dumb, and clueless about tone.

In the recent years I've been switching between a Fulltone OCD pedal and a E.H. Germanium OD..

All have the same issues. But the Fulltone Bass Drive fixes that. I'll try to keep you posted.

ScrapeMySky

Cool. Much appreciated!

mccreadyisgod

One old trick for bass overdrive is to use a crossover and split the frequencies. It is really hard to design a pedal that can distort such different wavelengths together and make it sound good. And nothing is going to really be able to emulate a good old tube amp working hard.

I know Jeff has used a crossover in his stage rig over the years, and I also know he's used a few of the Fulltone drive pedals on his board. Can't argue with the fact that Jeff has great tone.

All Those Yesterdays

mccreadyisgod wrote:

One old trick for bass overdrive is to use a crossover and split the frequencies. It is really hard to design a pedal that can distort such different wavelengths together and make it sound good. And nothing is going to really be able to emulate a good old tube amp working hard.

I know Jeff has used a crossover in his stage rig over the years, and I also know he's used a few of the Fulltone drive pedals on his board. Can't argue with the fact that Jeff has great tone.

I agree, I really try to keep the rig simple. Because of laziness mostly. For recording it's very possible to use a crossover. In the past I've tend to play through a 4x10 cabinet and crank the head up, (either a 100 watt bassman or Peaveys VB2). Than double track it if need be.

mccreadyisgod

Reminds me of how McCartney used to record with his Rickenbacker, which can split the bridge and neck pickups to separate outputs. He would send the neck pup to his bass amp, and then route the bridge pup into a guitar amp. It's a pretty good setup.

I always try to record a dry DI feed directly from the bass, which you can use later to re-amp if you want to try some different things tone-wise in post-production. I like the Radial JDI for the DI, and their Pro RMP for the reamper. You can run it through any effects, through any amps, or even through something like a POD or a nice tube DI/preamp.

exhausted

mccreadyisgod wrote:

Reminds me of how McCartney used to record with his Rickenbacker, which can split the bridge and neck pickups to separate outputs. He would send the neck pup to his bass amp, and then route the bridge pup into a guitar amp. It's a pretty good setup.

i need to try that. i have a 4003 and have never actually used the rick-o-sound.

All Those Yesterdays

mccreadyisgod wrote:

Reminds me of how McCartney used to record with his Rickenbacker, which can split the bridge and neck pickups to separate outputs. He would send the neck pup to his bass amp, and then route the bridge pup into a guitar amp. It's a pretty good setup.

I always try to record a dry DI feed directly from the bass, which you can use later to re-amp if you want to try some different things tone-wise in post-production. I like the Radial JDI for the DI, and their Pro RMP for the reamper. You can run it through any effects, through any amps, or even through something like a POD or a nice tube DI/preamp.

If the Peavey head gets used, we will line out of the head and mic the cabinet. A through DI box is a really good idea.

The problem with the bass at high volumes is isolating the cabinet. No matter what the planning, you still get vibrations out of anything possible.