I Found The (My) Holy Grail of All Boost Pedals

[VictorB]

Holy crap, I took a chance based on Mike from Analogman pedals advice, and what I read on his site and other reviews.

I ordered and received a Dual Bad Bob with the drive option, these are all custom made to order.





A little background on these pedals, as per the Analogman site:

The Bad Bob pedal is one of the best boost pedals available. It's a booster based on the famous and much copied mini-booster "JFET mu-amp" design of Jack Orman (check out his site to learn more). This design was also used as the basis for most other boutique boost pedals. We use NOS Fairchild 2N5457 FETs, and only a small percentage of even these original parts have the correct specs, as FET manufacturing is not very precise. There are no good FETs being made anymore, except some tiny Surface Mount Technology (SMT) parts designed for automated machine manufacturing.

Bad Bob is a class A booster that is capable of driving your favorite tube amp into tonal nirvana! With well over 20dB of gain, the Bad Bob fattens up even the cleanest high powered tube amp.

Do you use a lower wattage amp already on the verge of breaking up? The Bad Bob pushes it over the edge to obtain rich sustain.

Do you like a vintage or modern 30 Watt Class A tube amp cranked to the hilt? If so you will love the Bad Bob...

The optional DRIVE knob (on the right) is exactly the same as standard Bad Bob when turned up all the way. The pedal adds a bit of dirt. You can turn it down to get a cleaner sound. Down all the way is a totally clean boost. Like many pedals, the drive knob has a voltage on it, so it will make noise when you turn it. You won't be turning it while playing so it's not an issue. You can also get clean sounds by turning your guitar down on any Bad Bob.

Here is a comparison of the Bad Bob to my other favorite Clean Boost pedals:

KLON : The KLON Centaur is not as clear as Bad Bob, it is more compressed, even at minimum gain. Also the KLON is not nearly as loud at it's clean boost setting. The tone difference is really noticeable with the guitar's volume and/or tone turned down a bit - it makes the KLON sound dull in comparison.

Z Vex Super Hard On : This pedal is much cleaner than the BB, if you need just a totally clean booster the SHO is probably better. The Bad Bob has nice grit/drive even at the same volume setting as OFF. But the sound is not very useful at a unity gain setting, so it's not a great buffer pedal like the SHO. At medium boost, the SHO is sharper and cleaner sounding, the Bad Bob is not as bright, has a thicker, richer tone. The SHO is just as loud when turned up all the way, and the two pedals sound more similar when cranked up loud as the amp is really running overloaded by that point. The Bad Bob has a bit less hiss when cranked, I was surprised by this but maybe due to some high end rolloff. The Bad Bob is sort of like a Rangemaster clone (our Beano Boost) but without the tone change and emphasis of certain frequencies.

Beano Boost (not really a clean boost) : The Beano Boost is a rangemaster clone. It will give an amp nice cut and focus, and add a crunch, depending on how high you have the level set on the pedal. The Rangemaster pedals change your tone, boosting the selected frequencies. If you are going for a classic rock tone, it could be awesome and I like to run my Beano Boost into a dirt pedal as my amps are usually set clean.
The Bad Bob is a dirty clean boost, and does not change your tone. It may cause your amp to overdrive more depending on how close the amp is to breakup, and how high you have the knob on the pedal. The Bad Bob cleans up nicely when you back your guitar volume knob down, leaving a clean, pure tone with clarity and detail that will make your amp sound better even with no added gain. Many Dumble amps have a "FET Input", which is similar to what the Bad Bob does when it's cleaned up. I like to run my Bad Bob late in the signal chain, after dirt boxes. It's also a great buffer when used like this, as it send a nice strong signal to your amp.
I played a four set afternoon gig yesterday, and used the pedal for the first time in a live setting. DAMN it worked so well, here's a shot of the board from the shoe with the settings I used:



This took the place of my Klon Klone (Velvet Minotaur), it was the best decision I ever made, lol.

The boost setting on the left gives me a volume and gain boost, which easily cuts through the mix. The setting on the right is a transparent clean boost with just a hair more gain, which is perfect for some rhythm parts that require a little more dirt, but NOT more volume. If I turn the drive knob ALL the way down, and crank the volume knob, it is a 100% transparent clean boost, which is pretty amazing!

I'm so happy I took a chance on this pedal, it's exactly what I was after. I'm really surprised its not as popular as other pedals. I'm sort of thankful, that way there was no wait time, other than the amount of time it took to build it, which was about a week and a half, two weeks to my door.

Highly recommended!

 

[Wound_Up]

Does it have any sort of "channel switching" ability? I recently got a pedal with this and now I'm fascinated by it.

The pedal I bought can be set to act like a 2 channel amp basically. Instead of having to hit each footswitch to turn one side off, then the other side on, it does it automatically. If Side A is on and you hit Side B, Side A cuts off by itself and Side B comes on. Same thing happens the other way around. If B is on and you hit A, it turns off Side B automatically. You don't have to hit both switches to change sides of the pedal.

Its actually the first pedal I've seen that does it but I haven't been looking for pedals that work this way, either. It'd be nice If more double pedals were made this way.

 

[3bolt79]

How many decibels of boost does it give?

 

[VictorB]

Does it have any sort of "channel switching" ability? I recently got a pedal with this and now I'm fascinated by it.

The pedal I bought can be set to act like a 2 channel amp basically. Instead of having to hit each footswitch to turn one side off, then the other side on, it does it automatically. If Side A is on and you hit Side B, Side A cuts off by itself and Side B comes on. Same thing happens the other way around. If B is on and you hit A, it turns off Side B automatically. You don't have to hit both switches to change sides of the pedal.

Its actually the first pedal I've seen that does it but I haven't been looking for pedals that work this way, either. It'd be nice If more double pedals were made this way.

It does not work that way, you can actually have them both on at the same time if you wish.

How many decibels of boost does it give?

The Analogman website says “well over 20db”.

 

[Wound_Up]

It does not work that way, you can actually have them both on at the same time if you wish.

The Analogman website says “well over 20db”.

Yea I figured as much. My Gladiator pedal I referenced above does the thing I described above or you can do both at once. There's a switch in the middle that let's you select how the pedal operates.

The funny part is I thought my pedal was broken when I got it. I'd turn the pedal on, then flip this specific switch while trying to figure out what it actually did, and the pedal would turn off every time. So I automatically thought it was broken.

Then I finally read the manual and it explained how that switch works. You can either have a single side at a time or you can stack them.

The switch only has S & D so it wasn't very clear what it was for without reading.(Single and Double, I assume) You can see it in the very middle. So I'd turn one side on, flip the switch to see what it did, and the pedal would turn off. Over & over. I was SURE it was broken lol. Turns out you're supposed to use that switch while the pedal is off to pick whether it acts like a 2 channel amp or it makes them stackable.



I actually wasn't very thrilled with this pedal initially. Then I finally spent some time with it and read the manual. Now it's one of, if not my current favorite pedal. IIRC, it's supposed to emulate Robben Ford and Sunny Landreth's Dumble tones. Or at least the genuine Cornerstone Gladio pedal is. The pedal this is a clone of.

Robben said he used the real Gladio pedal to do one of his Truefire courses and he loved it. Robben worked with Cornerstone to develop the genuine pedal. I'd love to have one if the clone sounds this good.

If I end up liking it as much as I liked the JHS AT+ clone I have, the DemonFX AT-DS, I'll probably end up buying a real Cornerstone Gladio pedal later on. I bought a genuine JHS AT+ a while back to finally replace the clone and it sounds incredible. So I'll likely buy a genuine version if I really end up liking this one.

I buy a lot of clone pedals from DemonFX but I usually try to support the original creator of said pedals if I end up really liking them and using them a lot. It's only right.