About year ago I posted about the Darkglass Alpha Omega bass distortion/DI that sounds AMAZING but costs $349 (erp!). I was doing some research for a bass overdrive/distortion that a) was considerably less expensive and b) didn't sound like you had stapled an empty pie tin to the speaker cone. I also noted that even many bass ODs sound more like fuzz than OD. I don't want that. I was looking at the EHX Bass Soul Food which I liked, but I thought the gain might be quite limited. The opinions out there about it aren't particularly favorable either.
Today I came across the EHX Hot Wax which is basically a double overdrive pedal, combining their Crayon and Hot Tubes pedals into one. A lot of guys on Talk Bass seem to like the Hot Tubes itself with bass. The cool thing about the Hot Wax is that it adds a blend knob to blend in your clean tone--almost a necessity for bass. With both sides on the Crayon side drives the Hot Tubes side. It would seem to cover OD sounds, distortion, and all-out sonic assault for a price that is less than a third ($112 wall-wart included) of the Alpha Omega.
Here's the official EHX video, including a bit with bass:
Here's the Bassic Gear Review demo:
And yes, I tried my "Thesis 96" pedal that DVM made me with bass, but it just rips all the low end out. Sounds cool, but not particularly bass-like. I know that BYOC has mods for it for bass, but I want to keep that for my guitar, where I like it very much, thank you.
Interesting. I have both the Crayon and Hot Tubes as separate pedals and I only play guitar......no bass.....so YMMV. Saying that I use the Crayon more than the Hot Tubes but have found that they stack well together. The combined pedal you show has a Blend control and that might be very interesting. The separate Hot Tubes pedal has an on/off toggle that takes the pedal out of the normal tone circuit for some more grit/distortion. The combined pedal doesn't have that toggle. The price is right for sure and might be worth taking a chance on it......especially if you can get a 30-45 day return guarantee on it.
I can neither confirm or deny that I placed an order with Musician's Friend. I also ordered another 1-Spot so I can hopefully eliminate my noise problems with my guitar.