Fulltone Bass-Drive

Relatively easy to use. Okay, it's pathetically simple to use, but you will have to actually TURN THE KNOBS to get the sound you want. I would have liked for the manual to go into a bit more depth, but I'm sort of a geek that way.

I must admit that at first I wasn't enamored by the sound. I'd been expecting something much harsher and fuzzier, more metallic. However, the more I played with different settings on my bass, my amp, and the drive, the better I liked it. Now I love it (in a wholsesome, All-American way, of course!). On certain settings, it sounds like the bass version of Robin Trower or Eric Clapton during the Cream years. All of my equipment is solid state, but the Bassdrive makes it sound astonishingly tube-like. It provides an absolutely smooth, buttery, warm distortion, with drawn-out sustain. On my better days, I can actually imagine I'm Geezer Butler or Nick Oliveri. In conjunction with Fulltone's Choralflange, which I just bought a few weeks ago, the sounds I can get are unbelievable.
My primary bass is an Ovation Magnum II I bought in '79 (which despite a few flaws is still my favorite). My main amp is a Peavey Combo 115 with an extra 410 TVX cabinet, and naturally (I did mention that I'm a geek, right?) I have a variety of effects pedals, including other overdrive units. The Fulltone is by far my favorite.

I've only had it for a few months, but certainly it shows no signs of wear, even after using it to bludgeon my drummer in the midst of an interminable Roto-tom riff. I give it a 9 instead of a 10 only because it's still so new.

From what I've read in other reviews, I'm sure they're very helpful, but hopefully I'll never know.

I tend to play a lot of Black Sabbath/Kyuss/Monster Magnet-style metal, and some more psychedelic late-sixties stuff, although I will occasionally meander into slightly blues-or-jazz oriented material. I've been playing on and off for about 25 years (yikes!), but I would never go so far as to describe myself as a professional . . . I'm pretty much at the advanced garage-band level. Over the years, I've owned a variety of pedals, but right now my main pedals are the Bass-drive, Choralflange, an Ibanez Analog Delay, and a Digitech BP-8 Processor. I do own a Boss Bass Overdrive, which is fine, but the sound is not quite what suits my playing style. The Fulltone is much better for the way I play and the sounds I like. Now if only they'd produce a hardcore fuzz for bassists . . .

Very easy to use.
No patches, it's a pure basic pedal.
2 channels though.

You get
- A general volume with a compressor on-off push-pull switch.
- The mandatory on-off stompswitch.
- A tone setting that actually adjusts the amount of highs and harmonics in your sound (just like the dip switch on the Ibanez, but here you get a knob).
- A channel selector stompswitch, as this pedal has an overdrive and a boost channel. Each channel is controlled by a separate knob.
- Overdrive is lighter, more tubey and bluesy. It can also work as a clean boost with OD to 0 and compressor deactivated. Perfect to emulate a pushed SVT tone or an old Fender Bassman.
- Boost is more aggressive, from a punchy OD to a Marshall guitar like overdrive, with a preserved low end. You want to cover Cream with that.

The manual is very basic, 2 photocopied sheets actually. Useful basic info with comparisons to other brands.

I played with it for about an hour and a half, tried it through different other effects and pickups, and I was floored.

Whatever you dial, you get a great, usable tone. Definitely not the case with most overdrives, especially on bass.
It completely respects your tone. When you change a setting on the bass it's clearly audible through the box and low end remains strong and punchy.

True-Bypass is completely transparent to my ears. Of course it must suck some signal like any other one, but I don't hear it, and I was loud enough to make my neighbour cry.

You can use this unit as a clean booster as well, providing you want to push your preamp. I noticed that it's the SanSamp BassDriver's friend. They get along very well and produce wonderful tones together.

You can also leave it on all the time to give some nice gnarling to your tone, and switch the boost channel on when you need real juice.
What amazes me is that whatever you try, it's always musical and nice to the ears.
I can shake some serious windows with it, play chords, it's still pleasant to the ears.

4 heavy-duty thumbcrews with latex pads let you access the electronics, like on a Dunlop Wah.
Construction is awesome. It's hand signed by the guy who built it, and all wirings and solders are clean and well done. The box is made of anodised metal, probably aluminum (not sure).
Pots and switches sweat quality.

I'd go to hell with it without a backup.
Fulltone offers a lifetime guaranty, I guess it means something.

My only concern would be that when you open it, it splits into 2 heavy parts with the battery cord linking them. It could get teared up in the process.

I e-mailed them and got a polite, useful answer... after 2 weeks.
Lifetime warranty as previously said.

This thing is freaking awesome.
I couldn't be happier, this is exactly what I expected.
It's officially the best bass overdrive pedal I've ever tried, and I've tried quite a few.

For those of you who are used to bass overdrive pedals but haven't tried it, I have a very simple way to describe it : it's like a super Ibanez PD-7. It does everything the PD-7 does, just better.

It gets a 9, but only because it's a very expensive, no compromise unit. Worth it to me, but you probably can find something approaching for cheaper.

Very simple to use and dial in a good tone. 4 knobs [volume (pull out for compression cut), tone, overdrive, and boost] and 2 footswitches (on/off and boost). I bought this used without a manual but the pedal's features are really a no brainer.

Sounds incredible... I bought this primarily as a boost pedal for my passive F-Bass fretless thinking that I would perhaps add a touch overdrive to enhance harmonics. I usually use 2 basses on stage and my 4 string is active which would require some volume changing after switches basses hence the need (actualy just want) for some sort of signal boost for my fretless. The BassDrive far exceeded my expectations. From buttery smooth to Jack Bruce. My rig produces an extremely clean, natural, and unbiased tone (Demeter HBP-1 pre w/5751 tube, QSC PLX 3002, and a pair of EA VL-210B cabinets) but I cannot dial it into a "overdriven" tone. This pedal does the trick. My guitarist used it last night at rehearsal and completely fell in love with it's sound and lack of high end harshness. The pedal is seems to be quiet when bypassed although I do place it in it's own loop of a bypass strip. I can't be sure if it actually alters my tone/volume when bypassed by itself. Once again... an amazing pedal.

I bought this used and have only used it for a week. It seems completely dependable. The pedal feels substantial and the knobs/footswitches are solid. Smooth action on the knobs. Solid construction throught. If it died at a gig, I would bypass it on my strip. No worries.

Bought it used... have not needed support yet. The Fulltone.com website is incredibly informative. I would typically not give a rating on CS when I have not needed it but I will give Mike 9 stars due to the fact that most questions can be answered on his website.

I play in a small jazz combo as well as the backing band for a female rock/folk Ani DeFranco sounding vocalist (www.goldenfelice.com). This pedal is great and it is versatile enough to cover a gamut of styles. Fattens up my fretless niceley or could be used to for complete disto music.

There are quite a few combinations of sounds to be had given the 4 knob/2 footswitch layout. Knobs are described as follows, left to right:

Volume: Governs the amount of output signal and, in normal mode (pot pushed in), runs the pedal in "compressed" mode. Pull up on the pot to cut the compressor (be very careful, and turn down the volume, buckwheat).

Tone: Counterclockwise to emphasize bass overtones. Counter-counter to counter...

Overdrive: Plug your Tele into your Fender Deluxe which is powered up and is at "10", hold your guitar out at chest height, and then drop it. Uh huh...

Boost: Plug your Les Paul into your Super Lead which is powered up, at "11", and carefully suspended (with you and your guitar) from the ceiling of a mill works. Now cut the rope and allow entire ensemble to intersect the coordinates of the spinning saw blade...

"Overdrive" and "boost" actually are respectively performing like "pre-amp" and "gain" pots on a high-gain master volume amp.

Left footswitch: Engages effect.
Right footswitch: Engages second stage of gain, or "boost" as it were.

There are l.e.d.'s for both switches, and the unit I have is silver with black lettering. It might take an average intellect about 11 to 11-and-a-half minutes to decide what settings are desireable. As far as the pure objectivity of "ease of use" is concerned, ah, well...This effect is no Eventide Eclipse, but is also no Phase 90. However, I must defer to Mike Fuller's esteem for his clientele, whom I assume HE assumes are above average in intellectual caliber and moral fiber. For them, a "10"! Heheheeeee!

Absolutely amazing. I use this primarily this way: Ric 4003-> Bassdrive-> Phase 90-> MXR M-88-> MXR M-80-> '90's SVT-> Home made matching 4x12. Need to get an Analogman Clone Clone with the "bass/thick" option and drop that, the Phase 90, and the M-88 in the effects loop. This, block of sonic C-4, however, is the only truly essential effect I own. It is stellar. I could protract and prosaically praise this baby, waxing Mike's bung all day long. The simple $200 fact is that you need to just buy this piece of bad-assness. If you want to boost your bass to cyclopean proportions while you attempt to nail that Papa Roach or Linkin Park riff, or conversely, if you are actually a MUSICIAN, you will not be disappointed. If you get crazy with the controls, you can imitate a horn and bass string section all at once, or, in clean boost mode, you can evince a huge, liquid, bowling ball drop of aural ecstasy. I won't even begin to tell you what happens when you use the secret (18v) formula. Get it woman!

Please.

Please. A class act, I must say, I must say...

Bought used, but mint, as a one day return (as I scream, "My God, someone RETURNED this?")

Super easy to use, as are all of Mikes pedals. Editing patches....firmware? This is an analog pedal- no computerized monkeybusiness here! Just plug in, twiddle the knobs, and viola--great bass overdrive.

Fender Jazz bass > MuTron > Tech21 Bass Compactor > Fulltone Bass Drive2 > Fulltone Supa Trem > Demeter HBP-1 Bass preamp > Crown Microtech 600 poweramp > Eden 410T & 410XLT cabs. No noise to speak of, and sounds absolutely astounding when I run the Bass Drive with the MuTron. This pedal sounds killer.

I've had it for 4 months and have toured with it for 3 of the 4. No problems yet.

I also have a FullDrive2 pedal, and Mike Fuller was happy to assist me with some issues I had with that. His emails were prompt and my phone conversations with him were direct and to the point. Perfect! My time is valuable, and so's his.

I've been playing professionally (tours, recording, etc) for the last 15 years playing just about everything under the sun. I own scads of gear, and I don't have time to list it all here. This pedal is pretty awesome---the perfect bass overdrive in my opinion. All bass players should have one. Plus, it sounds killer with guitar!

This pedal is very straight-forward, as most compact pedals are (especially Fulltone pedals). The controls are highly interactive, and respond very well with tube (of course) and even most solid-state amps. The manual is a two-page document, which seemed to explain the pedal's functions nicely, and provide two good presets from which to start creating your own tones.

I'm using two Gibson Les Paul Customs, one a 1969 Black Beauty, the other a 1978 Silverburst w/ Tom Anderson pickups. The amp is either a Marshall 1959 SLP reissue 100-watt head into a Marshall 1960TV extra tall cabinet w/ 25-watt Greenbacks, a Peavey 5150 II, or a Sovtek Mig100H.

The Bass-Drive is supposedly EXACTLY like the Full-Drive II, except it has an extra octave in its range to cover those extra bass frequencies. I actually prefer it for normal guitar over the Full-Drive II because the low end doesn't cut out at all, unlike the Full-Drive II. It pushes the Marshall really well. I LOVE THE CLEAN BOOST!!! Incredible pedal.....the distortion sounds almost exactly like my plexi with the power tubes cranked and distorted. Badass...especially for pushing the distorted plexi over the edge. This thing eats vintage Tube Screamers for breakfast....

I'm about to give this pedal a 10....and that should be an honor bestowed only to the best products, not a fucking Boss Metal Zone....

This thing is built like a brick shithouse. I've heard of Fulltone pedals breaking, but this one seems pretty durable. The limited lifetime warranty is a great feature (wish my Ford had one..).

Mike Fuller is so helpful. I don't think I've ever been treated with such respect from someone at a music equipment company before. I don't understand why some people have had such a bad experience with him; he's an awesome guy.

I try to play all styles of music. I can find a use for almost any pedal in any form of music, one way or another. I don't even have to try with this one. This is one of those rare pieces of equipment that is just conductive to all forms of music; its tone fits perfectly everywhere.

Fulltone pedals are worth every cent. Period.

No problem. If you've ever twiddled the knobs of an effects pedal you'll do just fine here. I quickly read through the manual, because I read here that it had a "SVT" setting and I wanted to get two things out of this baby: an old school Geezer Butler/Jack Bruce SVT sound and a screaming, feedback rich distortion. I keep the Comp-cut on, as diostorted as I play it's to loud and unruly with it off. It really works for a clean boost with lots of headroom though.

I'm using a Modulus Quantums (5 and 6 strings) with Bartolini humbuckers and 18V Bartolini pre-amps through a slew of pedals-BassDrive-Mini QTron-Small Stone-Boss Flanger-Dunlop Q105 Bass Wah-into an old Ampeg SVT200T-Ampeg 4x10HLF. My amp is solid state, the warmest I've ever heard, but it just won't get that raging SVT tube distortion. My rig has lots of headroom, but every OD pedal I've tried has squashed it into a puny signal and I've thought about trading my trusty head in (I've had it for 15 years) for a tube head. I purposely bought this pedal because I heard it could replicate a "Raging SVT," but I had my doubts. I set the Bass-Drive to the SVT setting, goosed the OD up an extra notch and maxed the Boost. This thing is NUTS!! On the SVT setting it sounds exactly like Geezer Butler's SVT distortion from Black Sabbath's Volume Four! I honestly didn't think that a transistor pedal would be able to pull this off, but it did-and that's with the OD set at 9 o'clock! Turn it up and you easily get thick Melvis/Kyuss/Stoner Fuzz with tons of head room and depth. As it is I get all of the beefy dirt that I want to give me a dark, dirty edge, but with thundering low end AND clarity of attack. Even low Cs are full, sharp and meaty-while being distorted! This thing is GREAT!!! You will loose attack and some lows if you boost the OD past 11 o'clock, but you can't have it all. Trust me the overdrive you get at 10 o'clock is enough to send any Hesher into tritone groove nirvana. Kick on the separate Boost channel and the OD becomes thicker, harmonically richer and the thing spews velvety, violin style sustain. Running this through my wah, I can hold notes lower notes at the seventh fret, give them some left hand vibrato and they will scream and moan longer than any I've ever been able to hold before. I've played some hairy distortion pedals in my search and have gotten some really menacing tones, but none of them were usable in the context of a band, none allowed be to be distorted AND cut through a guitarist tuned down to C and using a bass amp himself. This is not a distortion pedal in the crunchy/metal vibe. It is a superb overdrive that has tons of warmth, low end and clarity, like a Big Muff on steroids.

So far yeah. This thing is built like Fort Knox. I doubt I'll have any trouble with it. The foot switches and knobs are all sturdy, the case is metal. They're all built by hand by the man himself, signed and numbered.

Never needed it but I hear Mike's a great guy and the only one you'll deal with if there's a probelm. Can't beat that.

I play very heavy Stoner/Doom/Rock aka Sabbath/Fu Manchu/Atomic Bitchwax. I go for a Geezer Butler/Jack Bruce dirty sound and a Duck Dunn/Rocco Prestia clean sound. Bass Player magazine reviewed a buch of ODs and said this was the action for heavy finger style rock-copped the SVT sound. I bought it, plugged it in, and played for two hours. It made me want to play, all of my other pedals sounded better. The distortion was so thick that I thought for sure my speaker cones were tearing. I kept checking my clip LED, but the signal was perfect. I knew this thing was overworking my amp, but every time I turned it off my amp sounded pristine. I play high end basses with tons of headroom and this pedal doesn't color or alter the sound, it just distorts it in a big way, but I can still hear fundamentals. If it was lost I'd cry and buy two new ones. If it was stolen I'd hunt down the fool and force them to transcribe Celine Dion's entire discography-and I'd know who had it because by some fate of the Rock Gods mine is #666. That's right, there will only be one Bass-Drive 2 #666 and it's mine suckas! Spiritu Rocks!!!

I mean, it's only 4 knobs and two switches, right? The layout is very straight forward and well labelled. It's also not that difficult to get a good sound out of it. My guitarist seems to be fond of the fuzz sound that it gets (turn all but the volume knobs all the way up) but I prefer a more punchy than fuzzy overdrive. This pedal lets me do that.

I'm using this in combination with a mid 70's DoD Phasor (nice little pedal too) thru an old Peavey 115 TNT with the Scorpion speaker. One thing I like about this pedal is that when it comes to increasing volume when switching to O/D, it rocks! One thing that I've gotta say that I love is how it fills out my sound. The difference when my band played with and without is huge. I went from sounding like just a bass to (in some songs) a "Lemmy-esque" rhythm bass sound. What also comes in handy is being able to jump right to boost mode when you need it. Just push the boost even if the unit is "off" and when you turn it on, monster sounds result.

But, I'd like the tone to be a bit more defining. It's almost too subtle sometimes.

This thing's built like a frickin' bomb shelter. Sturdy, looks kewl and the knobs turn very nicely. Don't need a backup, this thing's good to go. However, I haven't gone gigging with it so I can't say for sure. I think it'll hold up well.

Haven't had to deal with the company so I can't comment. But I like the fact that it's hand numbered and signed. For some reason it gives me the confidence that if something DID go wrong, I'd probably get great service.

Overall, I'd say that it's a great investment. It's got a nice, full sound and can really make the difference between just sounding like another bass or, in my case, stepping up to fill in my 1/4 of the sound. Like I mentioned before, I wish that it was less subtle, it could probably use a bit more punch, but it's pretty good. That and it's powerful enough to probably blow my amp (mmm... power...)

Very simple to use in all respects.

I use Fender Tweed, Brown Face, Black Face, Marshall, Jim Kelley amps
and I'm just looking for a slight to medium break up. It works well with my Strats and 50's Goldtop Les Paul. Yes I'm using it for guitar not for bass. It sounds just like a FD-2 except it retains all of the bottom end. There is no loss on the bottom what so ever compared to the slight drop in the bottom on the FD-2.

Mike has been very good to me. I have owned 2 different FD-2's Octafuzz, Clyde Wah and the Bass Drive and needed a switch for the Octafuzz, I emailed him and he called me at home on a Saturday (next day) and I had the switch on the following Monday.

See above

I play Rock, Blues, Jazz and write my own material and it works very well for the milder to medium over drive sounds. I do not care for the boost side and do not use it. I've played professionally (part time now) for 27 years. I also use a Crowther Hotcake for more intense
over drive sounds and it is HUGE sounding. I've tried many overdrive pedals, and the most important thing to me is that it sounds natural, has no bottom drop out, and enough range on the tone control to even things out. Many I've tried had to much treble at the minimum treble setting. Ouch!

Just an amendment to a previous review...I sounded a bit critical, perhaps because I anticipated the pedal to be the end-all tonal salvation for me, and it wasnt. I have used the pedal for about a year now, and (trying many others) have not found a bass overdrive that I love as much. I own the Line 6 Bass POD, and it cant even compare, with all of its classic bass tube amp models. There is something very analog about this pedal, it sounds extremely natural. It doesnt sound contrived...when you switch it on it sounds like your clean tone, except fattened up with some nice grit. It is smooth and versatile and I probably overuse it (so my guitarist would say). I love the sound...it is purer than any bass OD pedal I have heard. Also, I dissed the clean boost switch in my review...well, I didnt really understand it. It is very helpful in situations where I dont want to have blistering distortion, but where I want to be able to boost my bass volume when my guitarist gets loud. It would also be great for pushing non-master volume tube amps into overdrive (more of a guitar feature; this is basically a mod of the FullDrive pedal). The boost feature is rarely used (I tend to set the drive low, at 8 or 9 o clock on the normal channel), but occasionally if I want to sound crazy I flip it on, along with my phaser pedal for a really intense swooshing tone. Reliable, toneful, and worth every cent. Now I've got my heart set on a dejavibe (but my bank account has other ideas...)