Some digital innovation brought to us today from the fine folks at Source Audio with the Soundblox 2 Multiwave Bass Distortion. The bass guitar can be one of the trickiest instruments to record. This may be because of several factors, but one of the more common reasons is that low-end instruments like the bass guitar sit in a very awkward place in the frequency spectrum. The low end is said to be one of the hardest areas to get tight in a mix: things tend to get muddy and lethargic in a hurry down there. Throw some distortion into the mix and you’ve just made things a bit harder. There are certain songs that would simply not be the same without that distorted bass line like The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage. In order to obtain this sort of distortion you would most likely have to use a pedal designed for guitar or try one of the gimmicky “bass distortion” pedals out there. What Source Audio is aiming to do with this pedal is to offer the ultimate bass distortion stomp box by providing many different types of bass distortion in one pedal while implementing technology (multiband distortion) that would only be available in the digital domain. I like this a lot in theory, but how does it do in practice? – Read Gus Green’s full review of this pedal here.
