 With a truly British feel our retro drive pedal is bold and distinctive. Rich in harmonics the drive echo’s of times of old when people played real amps

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Specialty Traders

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Manual

PRO-FX Retro Drive

The OriginAL beautifully shapes the bass player’s clean signal whilst offering a foot-switchable valve powered overdrive in a single compact unit. Crystal clear cleans and powerful overdriven growl, The OriginAL encompasses it all.

Setting the Level
The -3db Pad switch is used in conjunction with the input level control to suit the instrument in use, Low output basses will not require the use of the Pad but Higher Output basses may overload the pedal and require use of the Pad. Overloading the Input will simply create unwanted distortion and sound unpleasant, with experimentation the correct settings will be found for the Instruments you have.

Real Valve Overdrive
The Valve overdrive circuit fitted into the Original pre amplifier duplicates the kind of overdrive you would get from Valve Amplifier and works in exactly the same way as follows,The DRIVE GAIN controls the magnification of the signal from the instrument, at higher settings the Valve will be overdriven clipping and compressing the sound from the instrument, Higher harmonics and higher frequencies will be accentuated whilst the lower frequencies will be compressed. Just as in a valve amplifier this will be accompanied by a drastic increase in volume dependant entirely on the setting of the gain control.

To enable you to match the Overdriven signal level to the clean level a Drive level control is also provided. In this way it is therefore possible to change from a crystal clean sound to an overdriven sound of similar level. The Input Level control also has some bearing on this as it sets the starting point from which the overdrive circuit works so some experimentation with this in conjunction with Drive Gain and Drive Level will be required to get exactly the results you are looking for.

The OVERDRIVE is foot switchable and the pedal lights up blue when the overdrive is engaged. When using the footswitch it is advisable and desirable to avoid large increases in volume as sudden level changes may produce switching noise further down the line.

Demo by Yisus

Demo by Martin 

Demo by Ashdown Engineering

Original Valve Pre-DI Pedal

Get ready to groove with the Ashdown Stuart Zender Fu*k Face VU, launching in September 2023! Designed in collaboration with bass virtuoso Stuart Zender, known for his work with Jamiroquai, this pedal is a dedicated bass twin dynamic filter that captures the essence of those signature "Virtual Insanity" basslines. 

Review by musicradar

Review by Premier Guitar

Demo by Zender Music

Official Product Video

Stuart Zender FUNK FACE

It's time to get funky with the Ashdown Envelope Filter. Capable of a wide range of effects from auto-wah through to spaced-out, auto-triggered funky tones, the sweep of the filter can be either up or down with selection of band-pass or high pass filter modes. A peak control is provided to deepen the ‘Q' for more extreme effects and the depth of the effect is controlled by the volume of each note as it's played, making this a truly creative and dynamic pedal.

The pedal is housed in a durable metal case and features an input level control with a trademark Ashdown VU meter to allow optimum signal matching from any instrument - active or passive. The pedal also features an output level control - essential for obtaining the perfect balance between the effect and the true bypass mode.

Demo by  TVOKCo

Demo by Bass Love

Official Website

Review by Ultimate Guitar

Review by Talk Bass.com

Review by Basschat

Bass Envelope Filter

A variation on our Triple Shot the double shot is a two band variable drive pedal designed for bass players.

Review by TonePedia 

Demo by Ashdown 