Question:
I'm working on a bass overdrive--designing it that is. I'm putting a blend control that allows you to mix clean signal with the distortion so that you don't loose your low end definition when the gain is high.
Which would you rather have? A clean volume and a master volume which controls both distorted and clean level with the relative level of the distortion fixed? Or a "blend" knob which fades between just distortion to just clean (which would allow the pedal to function as a clean boost/buffer if you wanted)?
The clean level is really easy to do. To make a blend with a single pot is a little harder. I could make serperate controls for both the dist. and clean, but I'd like to have just 4 knobs on the thing: Gain, tone, clean level OR blend, and master level.
Answer:
Hmmm...sounds like Barber pedals to me, but for bass. Cool. While I don't play bass, I think the blend knob would be better. Less cluttered and easier to control volume levels.
Answer:
I think you should go for something totally different from a blend pot. I havn't liked blending a full range clean signal with a full range distorted signal on bass...what I want is for someone to build a bass OD/Fuzz with a crossover. The lows stay clean, and the high end gets distorted.
Of the options you gave, I think two volumes would be nice.
Answer:
hmmm... interesting suggestion lee. Hadn't thought of that. It would take very little modification to the design I'm working with to more or less make that happen, by cutting out lows from the distorted input, and cutting out highs from clean. Might even work to put a slider switch in to allow either "mode" of operation.