Loud, evil, searing hot, and unexpectedly versatile, the Fuzz War’s demented bass cousin has a bold and more-complex personality all its own that sounds radical with guitar, too.
Evil. Just plain evil. Unexpected and vast variation. Responds interestingly to bass volume and tone attenuation. Wet/dry mix control. Sounds amazing (and extra evil) with guitar.
None.
$195
Death By Audio Bass War
deathbyaudio.com
If you like your fuzz measured in megatonnage, the Death By AudioFuzz War is one of life’s great joys. And if you’re a bass player with similar predilections and accustomed to watching guitar players have all the fun, the new DBA Bass War will be sweet revenge.
The original Fuzz War is a creatively twisted derivative of the Colorsound Supa Tone Bender But while you can hear some family resemblance among the Tone Bender, the Fuzz War, and Bass War, the latter is a very different animal indeed. I’m pretty sure it’s louder than the Fuzz War (holy #@*!). The fuzz is also much brighter than a Fuzz War, which sounded positively muddy by comparison.
That means a bass player has lightyears of headroom and range within which to shape their tone. And for such a loud, hectic pedal, it can be really precise and surgical. The experience of reshaping fuzz sounds is made easier, more fun, and much more expressive for the oversized outboard tone and fuzz controls, which can be swept with your toe to achieve wild filter effects. Along with the cutting fuzz tonalities, that lends the Bass War an almost synth-like feel and functionality. The pedal also responds in interesting ways to bass volume and tone attenuation: Lower bass volume generates less compressed, more focused, but still very insane tones that can be boosted to superheated levels with the pedal’s volume knob. Add in the dry/wet mix knob, which lends exponentially more complexity and range to the Bass War’s voice, and you’re talking about an exceedingly varied and evil fuzz device. Oh ... it sounds freaking amazing with guitar, too—yielding psychotically piercing lead tones, vintage biker fuzz, and vicious punk and metal grind. Wow.
Our columnist is really passionate about cleaning up his tone.
Our columnist breaks down why Leo’s original designs are still the benchmark for pristine guitar sounds.
It’s time to discuss a favorite topic of mine: the Fender clean tone. I’m a big fan of pristine guitar tones, and I think it might be the reason why I got into Fender amps in the first place. So, in this column, I’ll break down and explain what creates the beautiful, crystalline tone in vintage Fender amps, and share which amps are best for capturing these huge, squeaky-clean sounds.
Among my music friends, I am known for advocating these tones. Sometimes my bandmates want more distortion and growl from my guitar, but I proudly resist and argue that the music we create profits from a clearer guitar tone. It’s not about volume and distortion; it’s about melody, rhythm, and dynamics. Personally, I find it more interesting to hear guitarists with clarity, where I can identify single notes and what they are doing. It’s much harder to play clean, and the transparency forces us guitarists to consider more carefully what we play.
Tone and music are definitely matters of personal taste. What someone finds naked and thin, others will find clear and articulate. Let me therefore explain my definition of “clean tone.” A good, clean tone means clarity and little distortion. Clarity is achieved when there is a certain balance between the frequencies. There must be enough sparkle and brightness together with a firm low end. In my definition, you can also have some distortion as long as you have enough clarity to hear single strings in a chord, which some define as a “bell-like” tone. Muddy or overwhelming mid and bass frequencies will spoil this clarity. I like punchy guitar sounds, and for that we need muscle and power from large power-amp sections and larger speaker cabinets. But again, there must be enough sparkle and treble attack to balance that big low end.
The black- and silver-panel Fender amps excel in this area. Fender designed these amps specifically to support the music style of the 1950s and ’60s: Whether it was folk, country, rock, or surf, the guitars were supposed to be bright and clean. The amps therefore had to produce a sound that was both clean and loud, often without PA systems.
There are several reasons why these Fender amps sound the way they do. Let’s dive into the most important factors. Firstly, the tone stack and EQ section play a significant role in creating a scooped tone with few mids. Most AB763 Fender amps have 250 pF, 0.1 μF, and 0.022 μF caps (treble, mid, and bass, respectively), controlled by 250k bass and treble pots and a 10k mid pot (or a fixed 6.8k resistor in amps without the mid pot). If you alter the value of the mid resistor or insert a larger coupling cap after the preamp section, you will get more, and earlier, breakup. If we look at the preamp sections of the AB763 amps, there is no tube gain stage, whose purpose is to introduce distortion. There are only the necessary tube gain stages to mix and lead the signal to the power amp section.
“Fender designed these amps specifically to support the music style of the 1950 and ’60s: The guitars were supposed to be bright and clean.”
The power amp section is equally important. The AB763-style amps have dual power tubes in a Class AB push-pull configuration which has significant clean headroom—more than single-end Class A amps. The fixed-bias design provides more headroom than cathode bias, which creates sag and less headroom. The efficient long-tail phase inverter and the negative feedback loop are also used to minimize clipping. Finally, using American-style speakers in the open-back cabinet design of the black- and silver-panel combo amps will enhance bright frequencies and tame the mids and low end. All these details point to one conclusion: Fender designed the AB763 amps to achieve the cleanest possible tone.
For me, the cleans of a Super Reverb are especially fantastic. The four, lightly driven 10″ speakers produce a scooped sound with great dynamics and touch sensitivity. The full set of EQ controls, robust power amp, and large transformers work together to give you both sparkle and a firm low end, even at high volumes. The Pro Reverb and Princeton Reverb, however, will struggle to stay clean when pushed. The relatively small-output transformers are a bottleneck in these amps, and they both lack the important mid control to tame the bass and mids. The Pro Reverb’s boomy 2x12 cabinet gives a flabby bass response, and the Princeton Reverb has a cheaper and inefficient phase inverter. This means that these amps can play clean only at lower volumes. If you read my previous articles on these amps, you will find easy instructions for how to improve the clean headroom, if that’s what you want.
If it’s natural distortion you’re after, the best black- or silver-panel Fender amp is the AB165 Bassman. But that’s a different story we’ll come back to later.
Parametric EQ power makes an impressive overdrive extra flexible.
Powerful but simple parametric EQ creates huge range of drive sounds. High headroom. Intuitive
Some players might like a little more control of high-mids.
$179
Catalinbread Tribute
catalinbread.com
Catalinbread’s Tribute is a potent overdrive and a very nice low-gain-to-cleanish boost as well. But the Tribute is also a powerful EQ device—one that can recast a flat or ill-fitting tone into an ideal or unexpected sound in a flash. And though the simple parametric EQ takes a bit of practice to master, it’s highly intuitive, fun, and easy to use by feel.
Tribute’s fundamental drive flavor is hard to characterize because the EQ creates so many variations on that voice. I replicated a few favorite Klon-style tones and more midrangey TS- and SD-1-style sounds with ease. But approximating these baselines only scratches the surface. The range of frequencies that you can boost and cut—1.4 kHz on the midrange side to 70 hz on the bottom end—is considerable. So is the +/- 12 dB boost or cut at your disposal once you’ve isolated the frequency you want to emphasize or remove. The way addition and subtraction of these frequencies adds focus, body, civility, mass, or aggression is impressive and often liberating.
The Tribute will be invaluable if you switch between humbuckers and single-coils in performance.
The Tribute will be invaluable if you switch between humbuckers and single-coils in performance. It could be even more indispensable in the studio—not just for the subtle-to-nasty range of drive and boost tones you can access, but the ease and speed with which you can find them.
