Xotic Bass BB Preamp V1.5

I have tried many bass distortion/overdrive pedals. This one was on my pedalboard for the longest. The quality of the casing, knobs and the switch is clearly premium class. The pedal feels premium. When in use I found it most useful with Gain around 9 o'clock to create a tube like breakup and it's nice especially with passive basses. High gain can give you plenty of dirt- it's not bad but also nothing amazing. The pedal can be used as a boost thanks to EQ section although in my opinion it can't do a clean boost. This is the downside of this pedal - when I'm playing my Fender Precision with flat wound strings through the pedal the initial attack is compromised - it feels like very low frequencies are cut off - you can make it sound really nice in the mix by adding Bass on the EQ section but it won't bring those very low frequencies back- this is very evident when playing one song with pedal on and the next one without it during live performance. It's less noticeable with other basses (like Musicman style bass). Initially I thought this pedal doesn't need a clean blend but maybe that would be a solution - the downside is some pedals with clean blend sound like there are two basses playing. I would also like to see better online demos from Xotic as mostly their products are presented by musicians with questionable skills.

J'ai acheté cette pédale pour remplacer mon overdrive SolidgoldFX Beta (la première version). Je trouvais que je n'avais pas assez de réglages pour l'utiliser avec un gain faible, comme un préamp qui simulerait un ampli à lampe.
Je suis ravi par le BB bass preamp. Elle fait ce que je veux : une sorte d'ampeg in a box, avec des basses présentes et assez de clarté, due à son potard de treble.
Elle ne remplace pas du tout la Beta : je stacke les deux et la Beta s'en porte mieux !

On peut aussi pousser le gain et obtenir une OD plus agressive (mais très loin du metal de Darkglass !) et très convaincante. Le fait de pouvoir monter les basses est un atout pour ne pas disparaitre du mix.

Elle est utilisée par Bryan Beller, plutôt en OD : voir ses vidéos de rig rundown.