ISP TechnologiesBeta Bass Preamp Pedal

I play this at Sweetwater #gearfest while Buck Walter was demo'ing and was amazed at how great it sounded! I played it for 30mins with a Jazz bass and was completely amazed with the compressor and with the noise gate. It made the Seymour Duncan jazz pick ups come alive and just pop with everything that I played. The EQ with the dual mids are also amazing and depending on which bass that I'm playing, gives great flexibility. The Decimator noise gate is quite amazing it will make any instrument completely whisper quiet. I use a little bit of a different set up for my Warwick basses versus my Fenders and Ibanez basses and I can tune this in to get the perfect tone that I'm looking for with really nice quiet compression. I do use this to record and go direct out and also play live through my Markbass little tube 800 bass head and Aguilar cabs. I will not play without the Beta Bass at this point! I bought this through Amazon versus Sweetwater because I had some American Express points which help me to get this for under a couple hundred dollars - this is an amazing purchase and I highly recommend it for bass!

Works and sounds great. The charger plastic came apart though 2nd use for some reason, otherwise I'd give 5 stars. I used electrical tape to wrap around it in a tight strip that is holding the plastic casing together. Pedal itself looks and feels to be build very solidly. Wish there were a way to lock in my settings so when the knobs move in transport it would still be how I set them. Not sure yet if it's really worth the high pedal price, but it is a consolidated pedal for EQ, Compression, & Distortion in one. Distortion sounds closer to that Cliff Burton For Whom the Bell Tolls style. For some reason I've found it hard to find that fuzzy of distortion on a bass pedal.

This did not meet my expectations. EQ Q settings seem too wide for my taste, distortion was too much even when mixing in only a touch, and make up gain didn't make up anything, even lowering the output, when the compression was set the way I wanted it which was just a bit over center. I returned this unit.