I got mine yesterday. It's everything I hoped it would be and more. It's unmistakably the Alpha Omega distortion engine and I was able to match my favorite tone from my AOU right away and then make it better with all the added goodies. I love everything about it.
hey mate, can I ask you something about this pedal? Can you use it as a D.I. with no effects and equalization? Can you send just the bass signal in the D.I. while monitoring aux and bass by headphones? Can you connect it with your amp even if it has left and right output?
@@RocciasGroovin yes, you can send an unprocessed DI signal. You can also set the left and right inputs to be unaffected, or with the cab sim, or without. I'm not sure about the monitoring because I haven't tried it.
@@drphalanges1520 thank you so much mate... Can you please try It? I'm going to buy this but i'd like to be sure about thins kind of things... I'd use It as an headphone amplifier and D.I. box while recording clean tracks in the conservatory, and as a pre-amp while playing with my band, linking it ti the "return" of my amp loop
So many people in the comments talking about how great their cheap gear is. No, your Behringer pedals or Peavey amp cannot do everything this pedal does. The ability to create presets alone makes this pedal incredibly valuable for a gigging musician.
"BuT gEaR dOeSn'T MaTtEr"...people that say that shit make me laugh. Obviously, a 5150 isn't going to turn you into EVH, but Eddie SURE AF WAS...*VERY*...particular about his gear. Gear ABSOLUTELY DOES matter and anyone saying otherwise is a fool or lying. Or both.
I'm more jealous that this came out way after the other 3 versions lol. I love my standard alpha omega pedal. Kinda wished it was the ultra, but this photon version smokes them all lol. I'm sure it comes with a hefty price tag. I can only find them on "pre-order" everywhere currently.
Eh, there are tradeoffs. Cost being the obvious one, board real estate another, and lack of flexibility with modulation effects is a third. I think the older pedals can stand their ground still.
@@ericjonsson I have no complaints about the pedal I have. I think I would've rather have had the Ultra version for the added EQ, but that's about it. The part of of this Photon version I like is the added compression. As a metal bass player, compression is necessary (maybe that's just me lol) But I agree totally with you about the cost being a factor. That's honestly why I decided against getting the Ultra version. I didn't think it was worth an extra $100 in my case. Honestly with the emg pre-amp on my bass, and the amp, and the pedal,. ....it gets a little busy deciding on which to mess with sometimes. I usually leave the main amp EQ flat at 12 o'clock. Use the EQ on the pedal, and only if I need a little more or less do I mess with the bass preamp.
Sounds nice, nice grit tones, The thing is whatever you play, with a pick, slap or play with fingers, sticks, etc, but from the demo it seems they all sound the same in the end...
An effects loop wouldn't make sense on a pre-amp without a power amp section. Effects loops blend incoming signals between the preamp section and power section without affecting the signal of the pre-amp signal. So all you'd need to do is plug this into an input of an amp(which does affect the amps pre-amp signal), or in between an effects loop on an amp that has a power amp.
Very cool and grown-up, but pricey for some of us, missing a loop and I can still make all these tones with the same 3 Behringer pedals I've had since I was 17... compressor limiter >bass overdrive>bass preamp/DI. literally anything you want on tap from mellow flip top to DDDJJJENT.
Worth repeating just so DG will see the many requests…an effect loop would have made the price more bearable. You might as well save a bit more and get a Stomp.
@Alexandria Occasional Cortex I have spent thousands on the big names over the years bro. Still use an Ampeg svt3 pro on top of a pair of 2x10 hlf , but gig with a $40 Silverstone revolver p bass i added a Chinese music man soap bar to the bridge. The tone is in your fingers and your mind. Sorry you feel like you have to waste money to be better, it's probably not the case, but if so...sucks to suck bro. Get like me.
Got the pedal... and I will send it back. Switching between presets leads to audio-dropouts. This means you can't even (de-)activate the distortion without dropouts. That's just weird for any drive pedal, but at this price point simply ridiculous. The touch sliders are really weird to opperate. Sure they look cool, but I prefer knobs. Also, having the A/O Ultra here right beside the Photon, it does sound digital in the upper frequencies. Not bad by any means, but again for this price I prefer the analog version. So I guess to me this is the worst Darkglass Pedal ever :-/
I can confirm that there is a drop-out when switching between the presets, but it lasts for roughly ~115ms (so 1/10 of a second) which is not that big of a deal unless you are playing solo when switching between the presets. As for the "digital" sounding highs - I can't say that I can hear digital aliasing on ADAM or on the new AO pedals (I should specify that I have tried out the new AO, but don't own it), but they do in fact have aliasing problems (And I can say that because I've actually run a test for aliasing on my ADAM pedal). What people usually mean by "digital" sounding is the aliasing reflections that happen as the result of the Nyquist theorem applied to the additional harmonics generated by the distortion. It's generally solved by oversampling the signal internally for processing which allows to eliminate most if not all of the reflections. While the aliasing is present, its actually not that bad at all. The harmonic reflections are most apparent only for frequencies past 12k on the second and third ADAM distortions (these are most similar in sound the the AO distortion). This means that the "digital"-ness is barely noticeable on basses (You could pretty much only hear them if you don't use the build in Cab-Sim and listen to it through the headphone output on the pedal). Turning the gain way up definitely makes the aliasing reflections more apparent. I guess they couldn't make their pedals oversample internally enough to avoid aliasing altogether :c
the Adam is a versatile distortion pedal with different drives and fuzzes, but no clean channel. The AO is built around the AO pedal, it's more specific made towards those who love the Alpha Omega series
way better than the ADAM. Sorry if Darkglass reads this. But only for the fact that i don't need a Dingwall to make it sound good its miles ahead of the ADAM. And way more usable distortions.
To each their own I guess, but I can't really agree with you. I don't own a dingwall and I do own the ADAM pedal. It sounds great, however I did spend a bit of time figuring out settings for my bass specifically. I also realize that with some basses it might be really difficult to make it work well - One of the basses I own is a Gibson EB2017 bass which has a ton of low end and low-mids, but not much high frequencies at all. The multiband compressor on the clean channel exaggerates the low-end even more, which makes dialing in useable sounds somewhat difficult. I did solve that by picking less heavy sounding IRs and EQ for that bass.
@@txn_v Thats exactly what i am referring to. The difficulty that people have to go through to get a "usable" tone. Not even their preferred tone. Now i don't say, nor do i believe, that the ADAM doesn't sound good. But It doesn't work with most basses out there. The thing with Dingwall is that those NG basses have a thing of their own. They are like a cheat code for bass tone. "Your bass tone sucks? Get a Dingwall!" its exactly like that :)))). Jokes aside, the Adam is mainly made for basses with high output and loads of mid/high mid content. And this is not only my opinion. A while back Darkglass made a post on Facebook where i also commented and other musicians/Adam owners reported and agreed with what i said. To sum it up Dingwall, Warwick and Marcus Miller were the brands that worked. I am willing to bet that even EMG basses will do. But put any vintage sounding bass and it will go nuts on the low end and the distortion will be nothing more than mudfuzz. And the same with any low end oriented bass (like any Ibanez that has Bartolini or Aguilar pups).
@@tibi1687 I see. I never really realised that this was a more widespread thing. I guess its possible that if even more people bring this up to darkglass, they will make a toggle for the multiband compressor in the app. Although I guess that would kinda go against the whole thing with it being Nolly's signature pedal, since that multiband is responsible for that additional girth and punch in his sound.
The ADAM sounded great with my P-Bass. Especially after the firmware update 🤷🏾♂️. Maybe you just dont like the ADAM sound period? That would be understandable.
Man, the simpler B3K and B7K models will get ya there, and they can be had pretty reasonably priced on the used market. This pedal is just kinda siiiiick.
Love the pedal but I’m truly sick to the back teeth of people slap demoing them. Can’t remember the last time I seen someone slapping with that kinda sound
Great tone, but I'm assuming the strings are brand new, or pretty close....we're bass players, and alot of us don't change strings very often....let's hear it on a 2 year old set of strings....that will be the real tell....
Mess around with it and you'll get punk, you'll get you some dirty blues, it likes grungy alternative stuff. It's pretty wild but you can make it play nice. Then again, you are paying for this kind of "grind" if Darkglass is in your sights.
"Rubbish" works great when you're in the studio and you're mixing it with a dry DI track. It can produce some epic results and oddly enough, sit juuuust right in a heavy mix.
MERCH MERCH MERCH!! basstheworldcom.creator-spring.com/
Bro it’s translated to women women lmaoooo
Gregor, love your sense of humor and the whimsy of stuff like infinity tablet gag. Hope it's as fun for you as it is for us.
That omicron joke KILLED me 😂😂😂
better the joke than the actual variant.....
6:00 Ha Ha! I wanna go back to my metal bass playing too!
I got mine yesterday. It's everything I hoped it would be and more. It's unmistakably the Alpha Omega distortion engine and I was able to match my favorite tone from my AOU right away and then make it better with all the added goodies. I love everything about it.
hey mate, can I ask you something about this pedal?
Can you use it as a D.I. with no effects and equalization?
Can you send just the bass signal in the D.I. while monitoring aux and bass by headphones?
Can you connect it with your amp even if it has left and right output?
@@RocciasGroovin yes, you can send an unprocessed DI signal. You can also set the left and right inputs to be unaffected, or with the cab sim, or without. I'm not sure about the monitoring because I haven't tried it.
@@drphalanges1520 thank you so much mate...
Can you please try It?
I'm going to buy this but i'd like to be sure about thins kind of things...
I'd use It as an headphone amplifier and D.I. box while recording clean tracks in the conservatory, and as a pre-amp while playing with my band, linking it ti the "return" of my amp loop
@@RocciasGroovin I'm not sure I'll be able to any time soon, but if I do I'll let you know.
@@drphalanges1520 thank you
🤘
Changing IR's on the fly is a nice touch
BRUTAL SOUND 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Dope? Yeah. Price? Nah.
So many people in the comments talking about how great their cheap gear is. No, your Behringer pedals or Peavey amp cannot do everything this pedal does. The ability to create presets alone makes this pedal incredibly valuable for a gigging musician.
Hahahahah Behringer??? Lmfao!!
"BuT gEaR dOeSn'T MaTtEr"...people that say that shit make me laugh. Obviously, a 5150 isn't going to turn you into EVH, but Eddie SURE AF WAS...*VERY*...particular about his gear. Gear ABSOLUTELY DOES matter and anyone saying otherwise is a fool or lying. Or both.
I love how the subtitles are 1 part english, 1 part german, and 1 part 'I'm not even gonna try'
That omicron comment, about the name not aging well, that was pure class. Brilliant! Hahaha
If it sounds good, it is good. Digital or analog.
Amen!
I'm more jealous that this came out way after the other 3 versions lol. I love my standard alpha omega pedal. Kinda wished it was the ultra, but this photon version smokes them all lol. I'm sure it comes with a hefty price tag. I can only find them on "pre-order" everywhere currently.
Eh, there are tradeoffs. Cost being the obvious one, board real estate another, and lack of flexibility with modulation effects is a third. I think the older pedals can stand their ground still.
@@ericjonsson I have no complaints about the pedal I have. I think I would've rather have had the Ultra version for the added EQ, but that's about it. The part of of this Photon version I like is the added compression. As a metal bass player, compression is necessary (maybe that's just me lol)
But I agree totally with you about the cost being a factor. That's honestly why I decided against getting the Ultra version. I didn't think it was worth an extra $100 in my case.
Honestly with the emg pre-amp on my bass, and the amp, and the pedal,. ....it gets a little busy deciding on which to mess with sometimes. I usually leave the main amp EQ flat at 12 o'clock. Use the EQ on the pedal, and only if I need a little more or less do I mess with the bass preamp.
@@boosted0079 Its also not analog. I love darkglass but digital drives are still not as good as digital delays or reverbs
2:48 exactly what I was thinking xD great review! Love the channel!
Sounds nice, nice grit tones, The thing is whatever you play, with a pick, slap or play with fingers, sticks, etc, but from the demo it seems they all sound the same in the end...
im with you, it totally ate his slap tone
YAY GREGOR IS BACK
There’s one huge thing missing from this pedal… an fx loop
There's no power amp inside it, so how would it be between the pre and power amps?
@@jeleopard It would just effect the distirtion signal and be before the cab sim out.
An effects loop wouldn't make sense on a pre-amp without a power amp section. Effects loops blend incoming signals between the preamp section and power section without affecting the signal of the pre-amp signal. So all you'd need to do is plug this into an input of an amp(which does affect the amps pre-amp signal), or in between an effects loop on an amp that has a power amp.
@@boosted0079 it makes sense if you want to have delay/modulation not going through a cab sim if you're going FOH only.
Just get a quad cortex instead tbh.
I dont see a need for a loop on this pedal.
Is the clean channel also being compressed?
Very cool and grown-up, but pricey for some of us, missing a loop and I can still make all these tones with the same 3 Behringer pedals I've had since I was 17... compressor limiter >bass overdrive>bass preamp/DI. literally anything you want on tap from mellow flip top to DDDJJJENT.
Worth repeating just so DG will see the many requests…an effect loop would have made the price more bearable. You might as well save a bit more and get a Stomp.
@Alexandria Occasional Cortex I have spent thousands on the big names over the years bro. Still use an Ampeg svt3 pro on top of a pair of 2x10 hlf , but gig with a $40 Silverstone revolver p bass i added a Chinese music man soap bar to the bridge. The tone is in your fingers and your mind. Sorry you feel like you have to waste money to be better, it's probably not the case, but if so...sucks to suck bro. Get like me.
Got the pedal... and I will send it back. Switching between presets leads to audio-dropouts. This means you can't even (de-)activate the distortion without dropouts. That's just weird for any drive pedal, but at this price point simply ridiculous. The touch sliders are really weird to opperate. Sure they look cool, but I prefer knobs. Also, having the A/O Ultra here right beside the Photon, it does sound digital in the upper frequencies. Not bad by any means, but again for this price I prefer the analog version. So I guess to me this is the worst Darkglass Pedal ever :-/
I can confirm that there is a drop-out when switching between the presets, but it lasts for roughly ~115ms (so 1/10 of a second) which is not that big of a deal unless you are playing solo when switching between the presets. As for the "digital" sounding highs - I can't say that I can hear digital aliasing on ADAM or on the new AO pedals (I should specify that I have tried out the new AO, but don't own it), but they do in fact have aliasing problems (And I can say that because I've actually run a test for aliasing on my ADAM pedal). What people usually mean by "digital" sounding is the aliasing reflections that happen as the result of the Nyquist theorem applied to the additional harmonics generated by the distortion. It's generally solved by oversampling the signal internally for processing which allows to eliminate most if not all of the reflections.
While the aliasing is present, its actually not that bad at all. The harmonic reflections are most apparent only for frequencies past 12k on the second and third ADAM distortions (these are most similar in sound the the AO distortion). This means that the "digital"-ness is barely noticeable on basses (You could pretty much only hear them if you don't use the build in Cab-Sim and listen to it through the headphone output on the pedal). Turning the gain way up definitely makes the aliasing reflections more apparent.
I guess they couldn't make their pedals oversample internally enough to avoid aliasing altogether :c
I'm using Photon as audio interface for recording. Can I control the volume of unprocessed raw signal? Thank you
Maybe you can tell us what the differences are between this and the Adam? Seem to be almost the same to me, right?
The Adam is Nolly's signature pedal, and the Alpha Omega is Jon Stockman's. So almost the same, just 2 different signature sounds.
the Adam is a versatile distortion pedal with different drives and fuzzes, but no clean channel. The AO is built around the AO pedal, it's more specific made towards those who love the Alpha Omega series
way better than the ADAM. Sorry if Darkglass reads this. But only for the fact that i don't need a Dingwall to make it sound good its miles ahead of the ADAM. And way more usable distortions.
To each their own I guess, but I can't really agree with you.
I don't own a dingwall and I do own the ADAM pedal. It sounds great, however I did spend a bit of time figuring out settings for my bass specifically.
I also realize that with some basses it might be really difficult to make it work well - One of the basses I own is a Gibson EB2017 bass which has a ton of low end and low-mids, but not much high frequencies at all. The multiband compressor on the clean channel exaggerates the low-end even more, which makes dialing in useable sounds somewhat difficult. I did solve that by picking less heavy sounding IRs and EQ for that bass.
@@txn_v Thats exactly what i am referring to. The difficulty that people have to go through to get a "usable" tone. Not even their preferred tone. Now i don't say, nor do i believe, that the ADAM doesn't sound good. But It doesn't work with most basses out there. The thing with Dingwall is that those NG basses have a thing of their own. They are like a cheat code for bass tone. "Your bass tone sucks? Get a Dingwall!" its exactly like that :)))). Jokes aside, the Adam is mainly made for basses with high output and loads of mid/high mid content. And this is not only my opinion. A while back Darkglass made a post on Facebook where i also commented and other musicians/Adam owners reported and agreed with what i said. To sum it up Dingwall, Warwick and Marcus Miller were the brands that worked. I am willing to bet that even EMG basses will do. But put any vintage sounding bass and it will go nuts on the low end and the distortion will be nothing more than mudfuzz. And the same with any low end oriented bass (like any Ibanez that has Bartolini or Aguilar pups).
@@tibi1687 I see. I never really realised that this was a more widespread thing.
I guess its possible that if even more people bring this up to darkglass, they will make a toggle for the multiband compressor in the app. Although I guess that would kinda go against the whole thing with it being Nolly's signature pedal, since that multiband is responsible for that additional girth and punch in his sound.
The ADAM sounded great with my P-Bass. Especially after the firmware update 🤷🏾♂️. Maybe you just dont like the ADAM sound period? That would be understandable.
So I guess it’s gnarly expensive? I just want some rough slight distortion going on with my bass because for now I’m just plugged straight into my amp
Man, the simpler B3K and B7K models will get ya there, and they can be had pretty reasonably priced on the used market. This pedal is just kinda siiiiick.
Bass bass gear review channel out there!
My little Peavy mini max has a lovely built-in valve-like gain stage. It really snarls. Saves me buying something like this. :)
All darkglass stuff instantly sounds like darkglass. For better or worse
Truth. They did manage to finally start using decent jacks though. So, there’s that.
Hi ! Thanks for the video ! What is the bass guitar at 0:17 ?
So this is basically the AO900 amp without the power amp section?
It does a lot for the price. Try to see what separate pedals cost compared to this. The touch eq is annoying though.
Ilja without a Spector? What is this sorcery!?
Super alfa Omega is cool ✨😐
Oh fk yeah i need it...
Duders! 😃
What kind of bass is he playing in the beginning?
What happens if you plug 6 string guitar into? Sorry my bad English.
I guess that will work just fine
What does Studio Rig on the fifth distortion mean ? What does that do?
Thanks!!!
Warum haben die Profis eine Markierung, wenn der Wert über LED angezeigt wird?
oft macht man das für die Bühnentechniker
WHat kinda bass is the one with the matching pickups?
that's a Supra Bass ua-cam.com/video/qMwnxswU2G8/v-deo.html
omg... it's like the adam ???
Same layout, but different sounds
Hmmm… at this price point I would rather make the jump (150-200 € or so) to the AO 500 head, to be honest
this pedal is fully digital and programmable, aimed at a different type of user
Hell noooooo I’m not paying $519 for the damn pedal
darkglass the best😎👍
Sorry but I find it an absolutely ordinary effect. Good quality but nothing particular about the sound.
can you make video of Darkglass with flatwound and nylonwound strings equiped basses please.
I have a couple clips of flat wound P-Basses on my channel. They sound good to me!
Lmao not another DG 🤦🏻 when they all sound the same like every Dingwall clip
Love the pedal but I’m truly sick to the back teeth of people slap demoing them. Can’t remember the last time I seen someone slapping with that kinda sound
really? many of the contemporary metal guys are slapping. Here's an example we just published a few weeks ago ua-cam.com/video/EGWQIFvpu9U/v-deo.html
Jacob Umanski? Amos Williams? Conner Green? Maybe you're just not looking in the right places.
@@facemash sorry your right. That’s me educated. Every days a school day. Thanks 👏
Please stop cutting so fast from one farme to another. This is a preduct review and not some Nike commercial. Highly irritating
Correct me if I'm wrong, but cutting between shots doesn't impact the sound at all. Isn't that what the product is about?
Teach me how to speak 5 sentences correctly in a row… that’s the issue. Cutting is not necessarily a style, it’s rather a bandaid
Great tone, but I'm assuming the strings are brand new, or pretty close....we're bass players, and alot of us don't change strings very often....let's hear it on a 2 year old set of strings....that will be the real tell....
Yeah I don’t care I’m not paying 800 dollars for a preamp not in this lifetime it’s cool but nope
Sounds like all the subtle nuances of a broken 70’s era solid state, cheap peavy bass combo.
Not my cup of tea..
It just sounds like it would be great for metal or modern heavy styles but not much else 😬
Mess around with it and you'll get punk, you'll get you some dirty blues, it likes grungy alternative stuff. It's pretty wild but you can make it play nice. Then again, you are paying for this kind of "grind" if Darkglass is in your sights.
What fucking wrong editing
Sounds like crap
Why would you waste your money on a bit of kit that makes your Bass sound rubbish?
"Rubbish" works great when you're in the studio and you're mixing it with a dry DI track. It can produce some epic results and oddly enough, sit juuuust right in a heavy mix.
@@WilDBeestMF this. And it will always depend on the musical context