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.