What, in your wise and storied opinion, are the best bass fuzzes out there? Looking for versatility and low end by the assload
Bass Fuzz is an interesting subject. Because a bassist that plays in heavy bands often has different tastes than me. (in my experience)
I like a little more controlled distortion for bass which takes out a lot of really gnarly fuzzes on the wilder side of shit (i.e. DBA’s pedals, Fuzzface style shit, Meatheads, bit crusher style shit like the Geiger Counter, Dwarftcraft’s Eau Claire Thunder and such) and you can’t really just say Big Muff style pedals either because they vary so drastically especially when you’re talking bass.
The amp and style of pickups comes into play a lot here for me too because there were so many pedals I really just didn’t love with Active pickups and like with hot passives and dirt tends to react a little different depending on the amp. For instance an old solid state peavey will take dirt differently than a very modern class d bass amp and both with play differently than an all tube bass amp.
In short, you might REALLY be better off just trying to get your hands on some stuff your friends own and test some pedals out because recommendations like this are really difficult. What I can do is run through some of the stuff I own and some of the stuff I’ve used and tell you what I really liked.
It’s no secret the first fucking bass pedal on my list is the Damnation Audio MBD-1. This is a bass distortion with a really solid clean blend that allows you to retain a lot of your low end, boost up some of its ass end and have a crunchy ass sound. It especially plays well with an overdrive or something before it because you’ll push the gain of the wet signal and hear the overdrive in the “dry” signal. MBD-1 is king for me.
I really like modded out RATs on bass. I have a Universe 25 from Robot Graves but there are an obnoxious amount of RAT style pedals you could try, like Fuzzrocious’ Cat Tail or Cat King. They have a great nasty sound when paired with some aggressive bass.
Speaking of Fuzzrocious, something on the way nastier side of things I like with bass is that Blast Furnace. That is total filth but really fun.
I really love the EAE Longsword as I’ve talked about on here for a long time, I think it does a great job at having a chunky ass bass thrown at it.
Same with the VHD, it’s the distortion channel of an Ampeg VH140C, but it takes bass like a champ and is filth.
The Magick Pedals Magick Fuzz, the Blackout Effectors Musket, the SUF Tall Font Russian, a black Sovtek Muff, etc are all really interesting Muff based fuzzes that I’ve had good experiences with on bass.
Surprisingly, I like the Boss SD-1 with bass. It just does a thing, not really fuzzy obviously but there is some magic there.
I’m trying to think of some other stuff, but this is kind of my standard profile for bass stuff. I’d probably find anything I need somewhere in this list just about anything. I have demos of a few of these things on my YouTube channel.
I hope something in this wall of text at least helps point you in a helpful direction!
