Darkglass Preamp Help

[BelowTheBenthic]

Howdy,

I'm a little new to the pedal game and I was looking to get a solid pedal to get me started.

Like most everyone else, I like the sound of Darkglass distortion stuff and would love to play with it in personal stuff. Thing is, I would also like a pedal that works well as a preamp without distortion (I play at church a lot).

There are a lot of threads out there, so sorry if I'm repeating, but it's hard to get a sense for what was available at the time of certain threads.

I think I mostly have things sorted out to the B7K Ultra or the Alpha Omega Ultra. The thing I can't figure out is, how do those pedals sound clean? Most all reviews (understandably?) focus on disorted tones.

Also? Is an Ultra necessary? My thinking is an Ultra would allow me to use an always-on preamp with a separate distortion when desired. Does that make sense?

Thank you for any help. I'm having trouble putting together everything I've read.

 

[sunbeast]

The EQ on the non-Ultra versions (the Alpha-Omega and B7K) come after the Blend control, so if you put the Blend all the way to the clean side then you will be able to have a clean preamp with EQ when the pedal is engaged. The B7K has one extra band of EQ over the regular Alpha-Omega, but the Alpha Omega Ultra has a few more bands of EQ than the B7K Ultra (though the B7KU has selectable mid-bands, so the EQ is pretty useful!).

So with the Ultra pedals you get extra EQ abilities, a footswitch that allows you to turn the drive on and off (so you can have an EQ’d clean preamp and a footswitchable drive at the same time- only downside is the EQ is shared between drive and clean channels), a Master Volume control, a headphone out and aux in, and a digital cab-sim for the DI. If you don’t need all that, I’d suggest the B7K for the simpler/cheaper option because of its additional midrange band of EQ or between the Ultra versions I would choose the Alpha Omega Ultra because of the larger EQ section. The drive sections in the two are very different though, so I’d recommend trying both circuits out first if you can to see which flavor you prefer for dirty tones. I do wish all the Ultra pedals had the same larger graphic EQ section of the AOU and X-Ultra, which would make the choice more about your particular flavor of drive than potentially losing EQ options!
FWIW I much prefer the drive character of the AO over the B7K, but do find the AOU inherently noisier than the B7KU. The standard AO doesn’t seem to have the noise issue (but is limited in its EQ).

 

[BelowTheBenthic]

The EQ on the non-Ultra versions (the Alpha-Omega and B7K) come after the Blend control, so if you put the Blend all the way to the clean side then you will be able to have a clean preamp with EQ when the pedal is engaged. The B7K has one extra band of EQ over the regular Alpha-Omega, but the Alpha Omega Ultra has a few more bands of EQ than the B7K Ultra (though the B7KU has selectable mid-bands, so the EQ is pretty useful!).

So with the Ultra pedals you get extra EQ abilities, a footswitch that allows you to turn the drive on and off (so you can have an EQ’d clean preamp and a footswitchable drive at the same time- only downside is the EQ is shared between drive and clean channels), a Master Volume control, a headphone out and aux in, and a digital cab-sim for the DI. If you don’t need all that, I’d suggest the B7K for the simpler/cheaper option because of its additional midrange band of EQ or between the Ultra versions I would choose the Alpha Omega Ultra because of the larger EQ section. The drive sections in the two are very different though, so I’d recommend trying both circuits out first if you can to see which flavor you prefer for dirty tones. I do wish all the Ultra pedals had the same larger graphic EQ section of the AOU and X-Ultra, which would make the choice more about your particular flavor of drive than potentially losing EQ options!
FWIW I much prefer the drive character of the AO over the B7K, but do find the AOU inherently noisier than the B7KU. The standard AO doesn’t seem to have the noise issue (but is limited in its EQ).

Thanks so much for all of this. Puts all my questions together well. I appreciate it.

 

[MarkEO]

Hi I just bought the Darkglass Harmonic Booster 2. Sensational unit. Like you I prefer the natural sounds of the bass and this pedal brings does exactly what it says it does. Everything seems more distinct and at the same time more powerful. You can add a bit of bite if needed and use the Character option to vary the tone of output. I run it after an EBS Pro Compressor into an Ampeg BA210 and thats it for me.