New Toy

For the last while I've been questing to get the dub bass sound, which is super deep, muted, and health-threatening. From scouring various sites, the prescription for dub bass is: a) finger or thumb playing over the neck pickup or high end of the fret board, b) flatwound strings, and c) no treble tone. The extra secret ingredient (which admitedly was not around during the glory days of the 70's) is the DOD FX25 Envelope Filter effect pedal pictured here.



I bought one off eBay last week and tried it out last night. The pedal is basically an auto-wah, so when using it with guitar it sounds like a wah-wah being worked at various rates. The sensitivity adjusts how hard you have to play for the effect to kick in, and the range is the money setting. At various points you can get all treble, all bass, throaty wah, freakout, or a combination of everything. Not bad.

Plugging in a bass was a whole different thang. I'm guessing that the circuit isn't designed for the lower frequencies of bass, so the wah-wah effect is minimal. However what it does do is drop the tone and octave of the bass notes through the damn floor. Single notes plucked with the most gentle of fingers were producing tones that vibrated bits and pieces all over the studio. At minimal volume it was more feeling than hearing. I can't wait to try it out at a proper volume through a nice big 15" speaker. Awesome power means awesome responsibility.