That’s good. I have an Electro~Harmonix Worm which runs at 24V (!!!) for some reason that has never been made clear. It comes with a special 24V adaptor, and I marked it with yellow fingernail polish because it is notorious for instantly frying 9V effects that it gets plugged into. Some newer effects, like the Fulltone OCD, are actually designed to run at 9V if you plug them into a 9V adapter and run at 18V if you plug them into an 18V adapter. But no 9V/18V pedal that I know of can handle a 24V adapter gracefully.

Yes. I wasn’t talking about a “band in a box” type thing. I was mainly talking about the algorithm in a polyphonic octave generator that picks which notes to double an octave down.

Monophonic isn’t a problem, and I agree with you 100% that it would be cool if they also used some technology to make it sound more like a bass, not a guitar one octave down. Something like their B9, C9, Key9, Mel9, and Synth9, but for bass where you could select from 9 different basses – synth, fretless, P-bass, J-bass, roundwounds, etc. That would be cool.

What I was adding was that it would also be cool if they could add some very smart POLYPHONIC analysis to determine the appropriate monophonic bass note to play when you play a chord rather than just play the whole chord one octave down. So, if you play a C chord, it would be smart enough to play just a C an octave down, or much trickier if you play an inverted C Maj triad in the key of C it would be smart enough to play a C bass note for example instead of an E or a G. I’d be happy if they could just do the former. Heck, I’d be happy if they could just do your original suggestion.

My choice of sounds for the Bass9 would be something like:

P-Bass Round Wound
P-Bass Flat Wound
J-Bass Fretless – glissando + vibrato control
Hofner Bass
Upright Bass – Bowed or Plucked
Organ Pedals – Pipe or Electric
Bass Synth
Bajo Sexto – Octave doubled acoustic bass
Marimbula – Bass kalimba
Tuba
Fender VI Bass
Bass Harmonica
Buzz Bass

It could include an octave switch so that if you play a bass through it, it won’t change the octave, but if you play a guitar through it, it will drop it one octave. It could also include a 4th down switch so that you could emulate a 5 string bass. If you played a bass through it, you would get B-E-A-D.

This is a great idea. If it could use polyphonic octave down technology to detect the lowest note, or if it could be even smarter to detect the root of the chord, or maybe even know what key your in to improve the guess, then you could play chords or partials and have it generate the correct bass note.

Adding glissando and vibrato could make it emulate a fretless bass.

This is a great idea.

A linear power booster DOES have a purpose, but it’s probably not useful in your situation.

Forget effects for a second. Let’s take a ride on the way-back machine to the early days of rock and roll when British amps like the Vox AC30 were the ultimate rock machine.

Rockers liked cranking up their AC30s to where they broke up, but those early amps tended to get “darker” as they got louder. They didn’t have a LINEAR frequency response as they got louder. This gave them a “muddy” sound in the mix, so treble boosters, in particular the Dallas Rangemaster Treble Booster, quickly became very popular. These were designed to sit right on top of the amp and stay on all the time. They would restore the tone that was lost by cranking up an AC30. Any effects would go into the Treble Booster which was always the last thing in the signal chain. Eventually AC30s started being made with a “Top Boost” circuit built-in.

Electro~Harmonix released their own Treble Booster, The Screaming Bird, which was designed to be plugged directly into the amp.

[img]https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s–6gRt5ie—/a_exif,c_limit,e_unsharp_mask:80,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_south,h_1600,q_80,w_1600/v1403885370/lh8yvqpuidqjc3ezkmrr.jpg&f=1[/img]

Again, the Treble Booster was always the last thing in the signal chain because it was intended to compensate for tone loss in a cranked up tube amp.

As time moved on, amp manufacturers started to compensate for treble loss at high volumes in the amps themselves, eliminating the need for a treble boost as a fix. Some people still liked the sound of a treble boosted signal to “cut through” the mix when they were playing lead. Electro~Harmonix still makes the Screaming Bird, but now it’s a foot-switchable pedal that you can put anywhere in the signal chain. Still, the recommended place is usually at the very end, right before the amp.

But what about a LINEAR power booster? As I said, early amps did not have a linear tone response to volume. A linear response is one that looks like a straight line instead of a curve. As the volume increases ALL FREQUENCIES increase by the same amount – linearly. It’s actually more complicated because our hearing is non-linear! Our ears have a different frequency response depending on the volume, but let’s keep it simple.

Amps manufacturers had begun to fix the problem of tone loss at higher volumes, but many players liked the sound of boosted inputs with amps that didn’t have a lot of gain. Treble boosters worked but added too much treble, SOOOO that gets us to the

LINEAR POWER BOOSTER. A linear power booster boosts all frequencies equally – linearly – rather than boosting treble only. This allows players to overdrive the front end of an amp with low gain, or if they’re using a less powerful pickup like some of the early single-coils. Like with treble boosters, the first EHX linear power boosters were intended to plug directly into the amp, so there was not choice but to be the very last thing in the effects chain.

[img]https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https://reverb-res.cloudinary.com/image/upload/s–jY-jZM4p–/a_exif,c_limit,e_unsharp_mask:80,f_auto,fl_progressive,g_south,h_620,q_90,w_620/v1485664801/pkvnq4hmewjwkzhmshsw.jpg&f=1[/img]

How does that work now? Your amp simulator probably allows you to simulate a high gain amp that’s already treble boosted. If you have a low output guitar and you want to drive your distortion harder, you could put the LPB right in front of the distortion. If you’re amp simulator is simulating a low gain amp and you want to overdrive its input, you could treat that amp simulator just like an amp and put the LPB right before the amp simulator, just like it would have been when the LPB was originally designed. In any case, the amp simulator should definitely be the last thing in the chain going directly into your recording mixer from there.

Original Setup:

Guitar -> Effects -> Treble Boost (or Linear Boost) -> Amp -> Microphone -> Mixer

Modern Setup:

Guitar -> Effects -> (Optional Boost) -> Amp Simulator with simulated boost -> Mixer

Yes. Germanium transistors break up differently. They have a different “signature.” They respond differently to being overdriven, but also very important, they respond differently to how they are biased and the operating voltage.

I have the Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi, but the Germanium OD also has a bias and voltage control. One of the “features” of the older Germanium circuits was that they would sound different at different temperatures. They would also sound different if they were being “voltage starved” because the battery was dying. The temperature could affect the bias of the circuit and a dying carbon zinc battery would affect the voltage. In fact temperature could also affect voltage because a cold battery puts out less voltage than a warm one. The Germanium OD has a bias control to let you simulate the effects or compensate for the effects of temperature, and it has a voltage control to let you simulate the effects of a starving battery.

Some performers would have a selection of batteries that they had intentionally let discharge, but not all the way. The old carbon zinc batteries would lose voltage gradually, so there would be a long time where the battery would be running at 6 or even 5 volts or less before it died all the way. The pedal would work, but it had a recognizable “voltage starved” sound to it. Newer alkaline batteries tend to hold close to their full charge longer, then die very quickly at the end, so you can’t get the same effect with alkaline batteries. You also can’t get that sound when you’re using an adapter. The Germanium OD has a voltage control to let you simulate all of that.

Germanium transistors respond to a starved voltage differently from silicon. You can starve a silicon circuit too, but they tend to just stop working below a certain voltage whereas Germanium tends to just get more compressed and gated until it finally gives out. That’s why EHX doesn’t have a voltage control on any of their Silicon pedals.

Also, Germanium circuits actually sound different depending on the type of battery you use. I thought this was a myth, but it’s easy enough to test. I used a FRESH alkaline battery and compared it to a FRESH carbon zinc battery. I did a blind test with a friend, and not only could we easily hear the difference, but both of us prefered the sound of the carbon zinc battery. We tried the same test with a silicon distortion and the difference was much less noticeable. I tried it with my Nano Big Muff Pi, and again there was a difference, but not as great as with my Germanium 4 Big Muff. So, there appears to be something about the germanium transistors and the circuitry around them that makes them more responsive to the power source.

Carbon Zinc batteries are getting much harder to find. Electro Harmonix sells Carbon Zinc batteries for this reason and all of their newer pedals that come with batteries have been supplied with the EHX Carbon Zinc batteries. Danelectro sells carbon zinc batteries which you can get at Guitar Center. And, you can still purchase them from eBay and such.

If you buy a new Germanium OD it will probably come with CZ batteries.

P.S. Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s “better”. For some people, dialing in the right sound on a Germanium overdrive is difficult. There’s definitely more tweaking involved and as you can tell, they’re sensitive to the power supply (type of battery or adapter), the pickups and tone controls of your instrument, their position in the effects chain – before or after wah, before or after phase, before or after another distortion, etc, etc, etc. You can get a very classic sound with them, and you can get a more modern “smooth” or “velvety” distortion similar to a Big Muff, you can also get a very nasty heavily gated zipper type distortion, but you have to be willing to spend some time with the settings. Some people just never like it. They’re looking for something more like a Big Muff, or a Soul Food, or something more modern sounding like a Metal distortion. Still, if you have room on your pedal board for yet another distortion, I think you’ll be impressed at the flexibility of this one. And it will definitely allow you to get some sounds that you can’t really with with anything else in the EHS lineup.

Finally, I think, Germanium seems to “play nice” with the front end of an amp, especially a tube amp. That’s one reason they call this an “overdrive”, not a “distortion”. I have both the Nano Big Muff Pi, and the Germanium 4 Big Muff Pi which is like a Germanium OD with a Germanium Distortion in front of it. I tend to like the sound of the Nano Big Muff Pi when I’m playing at low volume, but I still want lots of distortion. I tend to prefer the Germanium Big Muff when I’m really pushing the front end of a tube amp. It’s more transparent and responsive to my dynamics than the Nano Big Muff Pi. There is some overlap between the two, but there’s definitely a niche for a Germanium OD on everyone’s board I think.

What you were attempting to do is referred to as “splitting”, and “summing”. Splitting is when you take one signal and send it down more than one path at the same time. This is what you get when you use the SB+ in A+B mode. Summing is when you take multiple signals and merge them into one path. Normally, this is done with a mixer, or a pedal that has a summer built in.

Splitting is very easy to do. You can do it with a Y cable. Summing takes more work. If your two signals are exactly the same impedance, then you MIGHT be able to use something like a Y cable in reverse, but you won’t have separate control over the volumes and depending on the circuit, you might create a feedback loop. Normally summing is done with a mixer. These can be active, which means they require a power supply, or passive which means that they don’t require a power supply. You can get passive two-channel, three-channel, four-channel, and maybe even more mixers that are essentially just volume pots attached to all of the inputs to control the volume and prevent feedback loops.

The SB+ does not have a summing function. It’s confusing because it’s labeled A+B, but it can’t actually sum those channels. A+B just means that they are both active at the same time. It really should be labeled A&B.

What you’ve done is you created a feedback loop. What you really needed was an SB+ to split the signal and a small mixer to sum the two channels back into one. Electro Harmonix does not currently make a small mixer. They used to make the 5x Junction Mixer and the Mini Mixer. You can easily find a passive mixer or very small micro mixer on the internet. Behringer makes a very small active micro mixer, and DOD makes a small four channel passive mixer. There are a couple of companies that make small two channel passive mixers as well. Just do a search for “passive mixer” and “micro mixer”.

I see that you’re happy with the sound. Testing it yourself is always best, but for future information, you definitely want a high input impedance with piezo pickups. The higher the better, especially if you’re not using a preamp. Without a preamp, you want to make sure that the pedal has a high gain control. With a preamp, it’s not so much of a problem because the preamp is providing gain, but you still want your piezo to “see” a high impedence so that it won’t lose a lot of low end. The Pocket Metal Muff has a 1MΩ input. 1MΩ [strong]is[/strong] a high impedance, so the short answer is, “Yes. It will work well with your piezo pickups.”

Also, the Pocket Metal Muff is true bypass. That means that when you switch it off the input jack is directly connected to the output jack. Most people are looking for true bypass, but this is NOT ALWAYS best. There are many situations where a buffer helps a lot. The Micro Metal Muff has buffered bypass. That means that it is always affecting the signal, even when the effect is off. The Soul Food has internally switchable bypass so that you can pick whichever sounds better – buffered bypass or true bypass – in your signal chain.

You were right to ask about the Pocket Metal Muff because not all overdrives have a high impedance input. Most have a true bypass which means they will not affect your signal when they are switched off.

Big Muff Pi Tone Wicker 130kΩ
Crayon 315kΩ
East River Drive 375kΩ
EHX Tortion 1MΩ
Russian Big Muff Pi 130kΩ
Micro Metal Muff 1MΩ, Buffered Bypass
Octavix 1MΩ
OD Glove 300kΩ
Soul Food 1MΩ, Internally Switchable True/Buffered Bypass
Tone Tattoo 1MΩ, Buffered Bypass

The EHX Tortion might be an interesting pedal for you because it has a high input, lots of gain, lots of tone control, and it also has a built-in DI. It would allow you to plug straight in from your piezo and wouldn’t require you to use a separate DI box. You could use it with or without the Pocket Metal Muff.

The Octavix would probably sound amazing with your violin. It also has a 1MΩ input, so it could go at the beginning of your signal chain like the Pocket Metal Muff.

The Tone Tattoo has a Metal Muff with a noise gate, a Neo Clone chorus, and a Memory Toy echo all in one box. Having a gate on the Metal Muff is very useful because any high gain effect is going to be noisy, but you can also use the gate to make the echos more distinguishable when you’re using the MM with the Memory Toy. The Tone Tattoo has a buffered bypass, but with a piezo pickup I think a very high Z (impedance) input with buffered output is what you want, and I think these three ALL ANALOGUE effects would sound fantastic with a violin.