Ground & Pound

Description

“Being a huge Justin Chancellor (and Tool) fan, I have always admired his bass tone and have always tried to emulate it. At some point, during my band years, I was running 3 pedals simultaneously, just to get that JC standard distorted sound that led us to this very moment…; Now, there is no longer the need to use that Turbo distortion plus that separate EQ….”

The Ground & Pound started as an idea to have a Rat style pedal and a Bass Equalizer combined into a single unit. The great advantage of this design is that one can explore the gritty character of the distortion while retaining its low end. Obviously, this was a starting point; the distortion has been carefully tailored and eq’d to have a full frequency spectrum, sounding full bodied and cutthroat.

With the addition of the EQZ tilt control (centered around 250Hz), it allows for easy and quick tone shaping.
-When the EQZ pot is at 12, the EQZ control sits flat.
-Clockwise, frequencies above the tilt point get boosted while the ones below get attenuated.
.Anti-clockwise, the frequencies below the tilt point, get boosted while the ones above get attenuated.

The “MIX” control, allows the player to blend the “clean” signal with the distorted signal with an interesting twist. The clean signal, actually, has very light compression (2:1 ratio) which adds feel to the playing and mixes very well with the distorted signal, giving it somewhat of a tube amp vibe when playing. The compression is borrowed from our Alma Comp design and it adds to the experience of playing, without colouring the tone too much.
The Ground & Pound, despite its original concept, is very versatile, when combining all the provided tools, for tone shaping.
It shines when using a pick and digging into the strings at lighter gain settings or it can smash your face in when using it at higher gain settings with both finger style and pick.

Size: 122 x 66 mm
9v to 18v operation
Current draw 9.5 mA (9v); 19 mA(18v)

-Top mounted jacks
-Wide gain spectrum from light overdrive to heavier distortion
-Dynamic touch sensitiveness
-Built-in compression (2:1) on the clean signal
-Equalizable distortion
-9v to 18v operation
-Signature sound with no loss of bass