Ibanez PD7 Phat-Hed: Bass Overdrive Pedal Puts Tremendous Strain On Its Neck Muscles
If your hygienic habits fall in line with most of the players in Seattle's early 90s grunge rock scene, you might want to enlist the Ibanez PD7 Phat-Hed as your roommate. The PD7's idea of "clean" still has quite a bit of dirt to it, and when you drive this pedal, its low end doesn't shy away from staying right in the epicenter of the dirty drive that ensues.
However, if you choose to live with the PD7, you better not talk any smack about its mama . . . it also is known for its three stages of attack.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
OWEN O'MALLEY: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com, and this guy right here is the Ibanez PD7 a.k.a. Phat-Hed. It is a bass overdrive and distortion and sort of like an attack boost pedal. The PD7 is part of the Tone-Lok series, so it's in this sort of die-cast aluminum housing which can take a ton of abuse, and it's also got these little lockable controls. The controls up along the top are pretty basic. You get your drive control, low and high EQ, and an overall level control, and we've got a couple of different modes and attack settings. Let's turn the attack off for now and bring your mode over to clean. Let's listen to our clean tone.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL BYPASSED]
Now, if we turn on clean on the pedal -- whoop, aha.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
It just kind of adds a little bit of dirt. This a good mode to sort of check out the different attack choices here.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Attack is off. We put it on one.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Turn it off again.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Bring it to two.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
So I'm going to switch over to a pick, and we'll bring it back to attack off.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Now, attack one...
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
...and now attack two.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
It doesn't really add in a kind of like high EQ. There's almost just like a bit more noise in the background. It's kind of a weird little setting here. I used to just keep it on attack one because I think it sounded really good in the other modes. Let's keep it off now though and bring it to overdrive.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
You can hear how much there's still so much low end preserved. Let's switch back to the clean channel.
[OWEN O'MALLEY COMPARES CLEAN BASS TONE AND TONE PROCESSED BY THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
It preserves a lot of low end. You don't lose any of your low end like you would with a typical guitar distortion.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Now, let's turn the attack on while we're on overdrive.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
And now attack two.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Again, not much of a difference between the two of them. It just kind of scoops the sound a little and adds this kind of weird background noise. Let's actually keep the attack off.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
This pedal really kind of favors the clean boosted low end as opposed to its actual drive, so it's a good way of sort of adding some dirt in there without obliterating your clean tone, but sometimes I almost wish it would get dirtier.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
Bring up the distortion here.
[OWEN O'MALLEY PLAYING BASS THROUGH THE IBANEZ PD7 PHAT-HED BASS OVERDRIVE PEDAL ENGAGED]
A lot of low end in that. The low is really just sort of like mid here. That's basically it, a couple of different modes, a couple of different flavors. The clean boost is actually really kind of cool thing, and again a very fat tone from the PD7 Phat-Hed Bass Overdrive from Ibanez. I'm Owen O'Malley. You've been watching Gearwire.Com. See you around.
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