BBE Sonic Stomp Pedal

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dan_studio_man

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i'm wondering if anybody has any experiance with this and if you guys think its decent. i have an agile LP and play through a Marshall 10W amp if that helps.

any other recomendations? my price range is 0-100
 
Personally, I wouldn't bother. I have run my guitar through my rackmount BBE maximizer, and I did not like it at all. Guitar is a relatively low-fi instrument, and I just think that it sounds bad when it gets "polished" through something like that. Then again, I always liked raw, unpolished stuff, so I am biased a little bit.

:D
 
that s the one place the bbe excels. it works great at sorting out the low end on heavy overdriven guitars. i love it but dont know about the pedal version. the rack version is good though. i seem to remember reading an article i think the kat from disturbed uses one.ive been using it way before he was playing.
 
i think it screws around with eq too much. Interesting at first but then it just bugs me.
 
thanks guys! i'd say my favorite kind of tone is that crunchy 70's aerosmith tone. or jimmys live sound from '69-'71 if that helps. maybe the problem is my amp. i'm thinking about either a peavey classic 30 or a fender blues jr. any info on those?

i know i'm kinda going off of the equip forums..but i hope thats okay.
 
I'll give you a hint. Mr. Page and Mr. Perry didn't use a BBE in any form. They also didn't use a 10 watt marshall (which I'm assuming is solid state)

If you have a good sound, you don't need a BBE. If you have a bad sound, the BBE will help you fool yourself into thinking you have made it better. (you haven't) It is best to save up for the equipment that will sound good instead of buying a bunch of $50-$100 things in a vain effort to make a POS sound better.
 
Farview said:
I'll give you a hint. Mr. Page and Mr. Perry didn't use a BBE in any form. They also didn't use a 10 watt marshall (which I'm assuming is solid state)

If you have a good sound, you don't need a BBE. If you have a bad sound, the BBE will help you fool yourself into thinking you have made it better. (you haven't) It is best to save up for the equipment that will sound good instead of buying a bunch of $50-$100 things in a vain effort to make a POS sound better.
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Well said. :D Positive rep time!!!
 
I have had to talk so many guitarists out of these stupid things. It's hard to do because as soon as you turn it off, everything instantly sounds dull. You have to get them to leave it off and get used to the sound for a few minutes. Then, when you turn it back on, they are amazed at how brittle and scratchy everything is.
 
Farview said:
I'll give you a hint. Mr. Page and Mr. Perry didn't use a BBE in any form. They also didn't use a 10 watt marshall (which I'm assuming is solid state)
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Mr. Page did use a 10 or 15 watt Supro though :)

I've never heard a BBE unit in use in person, and I don't really care to. It seems like they try to cram that into anything and everything they can think of, though. My TV has a BBE logo on it.
 
IMO it makes the lows big......big and Loose.

And the high end gets shrill and overbearing.

Its a waste of money that is worth saving.

-Finster
 
the amatuers always confuse the bbe with the aural exciter. the units do 2 totally different things. the bbe is far from being shrill or brittle. with the exciters you get that but thats not the case with the bbe. the bbe only seperates the frequecies and re-aligns them to hit the speaker in a way there supposed to time wise. you then preceive the heavier bass and cleaned up top end. its not adding anything like an eq. it can sound artificial just as much as too much distessor or spring reverb. on a home stereo it can sound good too. set it up moderately and dont over due it and it might work for you.in the old cassette 4 track days it did indeed help alot. its not like it cost alot give it a try and send it back if it doesnt work for you.
 
I couldn't agree with you less! the bbe does nothing but mess with a clean signal. The claim that the ear is confused by hearing things at the same time is foolish. Do some decent eqing and panning and leave the signal be!
 
gemsbok said:
the amatuers always confuse the bbe with the aural exciter. the units do 2 totally different things. the bbe is far from being shrill or brittle. with the exciters you get that but thats not the case with the bbe. the bbe only seperates the frequecies and re-aligns them to hit the speaker in a way there supposed to time wise. you then preceive the heavier bass and cleaned up top end. its not adding anything like an eq. it can sound artificial just as much as too much distessor or spring reverb. on a home stereo it can sound good too. set it up moderately and dont over due it and it might work for you.in the old cassette 4 track days it did indeed help alot. its not like it cost alot give it a try and send it back if it doesnt work for you.
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You have fallen for the ad campaign. The claim is that the process is suppose to time align the highs coming out of a tweeter with the lows coming out of a woofer. They claim that the crossover somehow messes with the timing of different frequencies. They also claim that all speakers have a similar delay.

So, since guitar amps don't have crossovers, they shouldn't have this problem. And if all speakers have a similar delay, why does it have adjustments?

These things were designed to bring life back to analog tape that has been used a little too much. Once everything started going digital, BBE needed to find a new market for their product. So they strung together a bunch of half-truths that most people can't fully understand, sprinkled with a little bit of sonic voodoo, and got a bunch of people to buy it.
 
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gemsbok said:
the bbe only seperates the frequecies and re-aligns them to hit the speaker in a way there supposed to time wise.
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That would only work if you had the frequencies split into more than 1 speaker with a crossover such as PA speakers. You would also need to be standing quite a distance from the speakers [30 feet or more] before you would even notice a difference.
 
The other thing is: This effect is like audio crack. Once you turn it on and start playing with it, it obviously makes everything brighter. When you turn it off, everything sounds dull. It didn't sound dull 5 minutes ago, but now, in comparison, it sounds lifeless. You get used to hearing the brightness very quickly and soon, thats not enough. You turn up the process a little more trying to chase that initial 'WOW' from the first time you plugged it in. If you just try to quit cold turkey, you will go through withdrawals. These things used in guitar racks are evil.
 
you can certainly play with frequency time alignment within a single speaker. i will try to make it more basic. take a track and split it into 3 eq bands and set each band at a different delay intervall. it certainly works on my single 12 inch guitar speaker or my 6.5 inch bootiique kustom model. has nothing to do with tweeter and woofer alignment.im not sticking up for the bbe process its just a fun tool sometimes. i think beginners will get into more trouble trying to eq everything and screwing phase up. i say get it right from the source and leave the eq for last on a mixer. if your eqing going in and out on everytrack it always sounds like a train wreck to me.
 
Yes, if you mess with the phase alignment, you can hear it on a single speaker. But BBEs claim was that it realigns the phase caused by crossovers. If you don't have a crossover, you can't have this problem. So you don't need to compensate for it.
 
Farview said:
I'll give you a hint. Mr. Page and Mr. Perry didn't use a BBE in any form. They also didn't use a 10 watt marshall (which I'm assuming is solid state)

If you have a good sound, you don't need a BBE. If you have a bad sound, the BBE will help you fool yourself into thinking you have made it better. (you haven't) It is best to save up for the equipment that will sound good instead of buying a bunch of $50-$100 things in a vain effort to make a POS sound better.
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Page recorded with a cheap tiny 20 watt thunderbolt amp through a 6x9 (yes, 6x9) and 1x12 for most of the first two albums. Now, if someone out here was doing the same the first thing you'd say is "get a real amp, you can't get a professional sound from a 20 watt amp with a 6x9 speaker, can't expect it to sound big" etc etc etc.. tell it to Page!". Page also used many effects pedals that would now be considered cheap and cheezy. Saying something like "If you have a good sound you don't need a BBE" is missing the point, that's like saying if you have a good sound you don't need to double or triple the guitar track to make it bigger or what have you. That's like saying if you have a good sound there is no need for compression or reverb or effects or no need to get your album mastered. Come on, these are just tools, take them or leave them, but your comments are short sighted.
 
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