Dumble-esque pedals - what's good and what's meh?

TimmyO

I can't actually explain why I stick with the Royal over The Dude - I can't describe anything specific that I hear that I like more, I just like it a bit more 

AndyJP

Yeah.. The simble sounds ace  on the clips. Not tried one tho
The dude has tight bass. And yep lots of it. 

Chester

The soon to be released MP Supreme could become a contender, one side of which is a modified Simble

Marko at MP told me: "It is a new circuit but similar to Simble tone wise. It has some added power amp simulation and compared to Simble, it has more headroom as well. And the left side is Royal Blue Overdrive as it is in the stand-alone pedal".

We'll see how it sounds in July ..

Tadragh1

I like my Blackstone Appliances MOSFET Overdrive for this kind of tone. It's red side might not have the "chirp", but is a smooth, touch responsive drive. What is more, it seems to work well with any type of amp. There is control over mids, which definitely helps.

solar

@TimmyO if you ever fancy moving on that Dude do let me know!

fenderbender4

Some of the pedals I've been through:

Barber Burn Unit EQ
Simble
Original Hermida Zendrive
Tonehunter Blueline OD
Van Weelden Royal OD
OceanEFX Pearl Drive
Kingsley Maiden BF + DS + Lift Switch
BJFE Model D
Shin's Music Dumbloid

Never played a real dumble but am using a Quinn TKT183, Two-Rock TS-1 NOS, and Custom by Cougar as reference.

The Shin's Music dumbloid really does stand out as having that "thing" at least to my ear.  The Kingsley stuff and the Tonehunter are close as well.  Just in my experience, when chasing after the Dumble thing, many builders go after a certain kind of "sound" rather than feel and it ends up being a somewhat generic overdrive with some EQ'ing.  There's a certain "fuzz-like" quality to the OD of the dumble type amps I've played and many pedals don't go for that, the aforementioned ones do.

Just my input.

AndyJP

Got another angle for you guys. From what I've read the ODS was inspired by Alex Dumble watching Robben Ford play a Fender Bassman with two tube screamers. That formed the basis for the sound.

So a Fender voiced amp with two stacked mid humped drives?

Here's a vid that explains a lot of this. He expirements with two overdrives about 10 mins in. Think he gets the sound pretty close.

prlgmnr

AndyJP said:

Got another angle for you guys. From what I've read the ODS was inspired by Alex Dumble watching Robben Ford play a Fender Bassman with two tube screamers. That formed the basis for the sound.

So a Fender voiced amp with two stacked mid humped drives?

Here's a vid that explains a lot of this. He expirements with two overdrives about 10 mins in. Think he gets the sound pretty close.

Is that this 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBHuo7xjySo

AndyJP

Yup that's the one

Jalapeno

Hmmm .... now I know why I like EP Boost hitting my Zendrive !

ChuckManual

After years of reading that a Dumble sounds the way it does because the tone stack is before the gain stage - and running my pedals (an Ethos TLE and a Zendrive 2) in that order - I finally discovered exactly the tone(s) I was after by doing exactly the opposite.

My current drive/boost set-up is Zen 2 > Ethos > Tubescreamer ...which gets me;

1) Clean - The Ethos clean channel
2) Break-up - Ethos (clean) into Tubescreamer that's barely on
3) 'That' smooth OD tone - Zen 2 into Ethos clean channel
4) Borderline Fuzz - Ethos OD channel with the Gain almost maxed-out
5) Everything's about to burst into flames - Zen 2 into Ethos OD channel
6) Nigel Tufnel / One Louder - as above, but with the Ethos boost function engaged
7) Everything has just burst into flames - add ZVex Fat Fuzz Factory to any of the above settings, at any point of the signal chain

OK, so, I've drifted off the point a bit - but my experience is; don't follow what is supposed to be a logical path. Mess about. Plug things in, in the "wrong" order. Experiment. Enjoy. You never know what you might find ...for me it was tonal happiness.

west

Scott lerner playing through the Wiz pedal not had one myself ... seems to do the do...