After talking with John at the start of the recording sessions for the latest Dream Theater album, John wanted to look at building on his tone further with Ashdown, he had been using our ABM-600's for some time now and wanted something to further the relationship and having never done a signature pedal before we wanted to produce something worthy of such a monster player.
After talking with his tech and long-term Dream Theater crew chief Maddi we gained an idea of what was required to sit in line with his amps and instrument. The Music Man Bongo has quite a unique tonal quality to it and his signature 6 string sounds and plays like nothing else. Bass distortion requires a strong gain structure to replicate a vast range of frequencies and with Johns playing this needed to be right. John had this to say about it:
'I absolutely love the pedal, I have been using it in a DAW setting and I think it's going to translate well in a live show setting as well, it's always great to have an option like this, I needed this! Thank you for creating such a great pedal. Drive 1: Is great at harmonic distortion. Drive 2: Offers a great tweak in bass presence being able to bring it out without getting in the way of itself.'
The pedal features as above two individual distortions that can be stacked to achieve new levels of gain. A transformer isolated Di for use with FOH or DAW interfaces, built using 1.6mm Zintec with a .9mm alloy over panel ensures the pedal is built to last. Dual VU meters adorn the top of the pedal registering the Input and Output signals of the pedal to ensure a correct gain structure dependant on input source.