singemonkey wrote:
I was very interested in the pedal at first because I have a silverface bassman that doesn't like to overdrive (it sounds damn sweet, just very clean). This seemed like a brilliant idea because I love the idea of controlling overdrive from the guitar's volume knob. But I actually read (in contrast to what's been said) that they actually sound best played through tubes.
With valve amps and these kind of modelling units I've had pretty poor results on the whole. I used to have the Digitech Crossroads and Hendrix modelling pedals and it was impossible to get them to sound nice with my AC30, while they sounded great through the solid state clean channel of the cheapo Marshall MGX.
The issue, in my view, is this, and if you take this Bassman pedal as an example: this thing is modelled on a Tweed series Bassman amp, the Tweed's tone stack, the Tweed's gain stage(s) in the preamp, 6L6s in the power amp (whatever rectifier these things use), no doubt trying to emulate a 4x10 cab loaded with Jensens into the bargain. The only way a modelling unit like this is going to sound the way it should is if you put it through a pure "vanilla" sounding amp or DI'd into a PA... it doesn't matter if it’s a solid state or valve amp, but any native tone your amp has is going to detract from the whole Bassman vibe that this pedal was designed for.
Put it this way, if I want my guitar to sound like its running through a Bassman amp, using this pedal, it pretty much defeats the object if you're running it into something like my AC30 2x12, which is a very specific-sounding amp: strong in the mids, EL86s in the power amp, rectifier sag, the works. In the same way, a lot of POD users turn the amp models off when they're running their POD through a decent amp, because the amp modelling itself digitally tries to duplicate a lot of what a decent amp is already doing for you.
So I'm not disputing that this pedal can, or should, sound good through a valve amp, as long as your amp doesn't colour the resulting tone from the Bassman pedal too much that it defeats the whole point of the pedal in the first place... it may well work great with something like the Peavey Classic range or the Fender Blues amp range because amps like that (and other, cheaper valve amps) tend to be pretty generic-sounding. Using this pedal with my Mesa seems pointless to me since the Mesa already does everything this pedal was designed to do in the first place, while running it through the AC30 it's going to sound more like an AC30 than a Bassman.
In your case you've already got a great sounding Bassman, so if you want more gain look at a Tube-screamer or similar. If you've got an amp that's got a rather flat, maybe a bit lifeless clean channel, then something like this Bassman pedal can work wonders.
