A very popular and incredibly expensive amp [Dumble] is sought out by many guitarists, until they learn the price. The last one I saw was listed at $50k, but I've heard that's not the most expensive. Users include Stevie Ray Vaughan (not anymore), Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Ben Harper, and others. Dumble did some magic with the preamp to make a tone that's distorted at lower volumes and sounds great. You're not likely to get a new one these days, so others have stepped in, including Bludotone, Two Rock, and others, including Ceriatone, where you can get yours in kit form or magnificently built.
Carlton and Ford realized it was expensive to tote amps around Europe, so sometimes they found other ways. Ford used the Zendrive pedal, which is available in a few different forms and versions. There are so many Dumble-like pedals, it's near impossible to decide. Even the very cheap knockoffs can be had for well under $100. Here's where your work comes in: you need to research the pedals, whether locally, loan, or YouTube. YouTube is indispensable for hearing equipment. Whatever it is, someone put several demos on YouTube. The best video, in my opinion (it's my damn blog), is That Pedal Show's shootout of 7 pedals claiming D-tone. Let's ignore the fact that none of us have Dumbles and we may not be able to identify the tone. The guys thoroughly go through the pedals, that range from about $140 to about $600. The funniest/saddest entry was the combination of the Blues Driver and GE-7 Equalizer, which got them into the general neighborhood. The pedals were all pretty good, but I liked The Dude; for its similarity and tone in general.
At this level, we're subject to the 80/20 price/performance triple-tone Special Rule<tm>. This is where all the pedals sound great and close to their mark, but how much more are you willing to spend to sound the closest? I couldn't rationalize $600 for a pedal, so I waited for a good deal on a Dude. The Mad Professor Simble is another winner, to my ears, just from listening on YouTube. The aforementioned 80/20 price/performance triple-tone Special Rule<tm> also demands you look at the input and output jacks. You have to see whether they're on the front or the side of the box... this determines part of the tone*. I'm not going to give it away - do the research. * I made that up
Special mention to Wampler. Everything I've seen of theirs is high quality and sounds great. Their entry was the Euphoria. Let's not even speak of the Marshall pedals... tons to sound like every version of Marshall. Hint: listen to the MI Audio Super Crunch Box.
The first thing I noticed was The Dude was a lot smaller than I expected.
I have no idea why I expected a larger pedal, but there it is. I like big pedals - they're much harder to fit on pedalboards, and cause other guitarists to have fits. If you can't cause fits with your pedals, you have to do it with your playing. I am doubly talented, in that I can cause fits with either. The pedal is also very solid, which is great as a weapon if the crowd (or other band members) attacks. Because The Dude traveled so far to get to my house, I let it sit in its box for 24 hours, to settle in and adjust its mojo to my house. If you play it too early, it may not have its mojo set yet, or use the mojo from its prior owner. Do you really want a pedal with mojo from Utah? Well, maybe you do... Utah is run by the Mormons, but consumes the most traffic from Pornhub of any state.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, Duding.
I assume you can power the pedal with a battery, but I wouldn't bother. It could take a week to get it open. Who uses batteries anyway? Ok, Eric Johnson prefers his batteries at 7v, but we're not Eric Johnson, are we? [If we are Eric Johnson, send me a message - we have things to discuss.] The pedal is black.. I hope I don't offend anybody by saying that. The writing is white, and I don't imagine it will show up well onstage. Since I rarely get onstage, it's a moot point. My wife would prefer a mute point.
I've been playing guitar since after the Moon landing, and I've collected huge amounts of Goodies. Naturally this means there is not a 9v adapter in the entire house. I think they hid when they heard I needed one. I just bought some other pedals and I know they needed adapters too. Nope - not one. So I discovered The Dude accepts a 9v battery, because I had to take one out of a different box, because we have no 9v batteries either. Do you see where this is going? I keep watching stuff leap off shelves at my wife. We're calling an exorcist later this week.
Fortunately The Dude works. I know this because the green light glowed. I never paid attention to LEDs until I got a Danelectro pedal with a piercing blue LED. The blue ones sound better than the green ones. Don't let anyone know I told you so. It will be our little tone secret, ok?
The YouTube demos get you the general idea, but you really have to play with something yourself (NO, don't do it) to get a real idea of how it handles. Let's start with the SRV fans: if you're buying this pedal to keep the gain all the way down and the volume up to overload your amp, you are going to be very disappointed. The volume control is heavily dependent on the gain control, so by the time you get much output, you have too much gain to cleanly overdrive your amp. This is the single warning I can pass along, but if you were that concerned, you'd have already bought a Tube Screamer, or one of the 666 variations of it.
Now for the fun part: the moment you plug in til the moment you have to be torn away from playing. This is a seriously fun pedal. Again, I have never played through a Dumble, but this pedal stands up well on its own. It has a very wide range of tones and way more gain than I thought it would. Forget using it for clean stuff or backing your guitar's volume to 2 - you'll just get less grit.
The Dude has 4 knobs: volume (volume), treble (treble), ratio (boost/gain), and deep (thick). They do more or less what you'd expect them to do. Deep is something you will need to play with. After playing around, I kept it at 9:00 because the tone got too 'large' above that setting. It probably wouldn't record well any higher. Most of your attention will be focused on the ratio control. It goes from Smooth all the way to Too Much. I wound up with it around 9:00 too. It starts with a smooth, silky tone, which the treble control can do very little to ruin. I test stuff out through my Marshall Code 25 because it's tiny, solid state, and some of the presets are anemic, to be polite. If it sounds good through this, it will love my real Marshall and Fenders. The tone is large, brown-ish and smooth overall. It gets larger and way distorted as you turn it up, but still brown-ish. I think the key is not to crank the treble knob. In fact, it's almost too heavy (for me) past 12:00. It's fat and chewy at all levels. It doesn't sound like any pedals (or amps) I have, and I have a few. It's hard to give you a 'sounds like.' It's more of an overdrive than anything else, with gain to spare.
Bottom line: buy the damn thing, used or new. If nothing else, it will give you a large, smooth tone to add to your palette. With a little tweaking, it will make you Larry Carlton and Robben Ford (assuming you can play like them). It's reasonably priced (roughly $140+ used, check Reverb) and music to my ears. I hate everything, so when I say something nice, it might be worth checking out. In the meantime, check out the reviews on YouTube. I want to make my own channel, but video isn't my specialty and I'm too ugly to appear on video, so I'd have to find a good looking person to front for me (Sofia Vergara, anyone?).
If you have any questions, ask in the comments.
I'll post further observations as I play with it more (don't you dare).
At some point, I'll A/B it with the Lovepedal Superlead (dimed Marshall tones). If I'm feeling particularly prickly that day, I'll A/B it with a phase shifter and a washboard.
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