Trickfish Amplification Pedals: Signal Filter, VCA Compressor, External Pre Amp, Overdrive Preamp

Signal Filter

To be fair – and by Ryan’s from Trickfish own admission – high-pass and low-pass filters are not the most sexy, exciting effect. Generally speaking, they’re not used as effects, at all, typically. But rarely can an “effect” have such a profound and prolonged impact on the rest of your signal chain and your amplification! Those of us who’ve delved deeply into the world of audio engineering or mixing are likely well acquainted with the virtues of an HPF (high-pass filter) on bass, and perhaps the LPF, as well – with the latter being likely more largely known by the subset of us who’ve acquired some first-hand synth experience. But for the majority of lowenders, the benefits of chopping off parts of your signal may seem less intuitive.

There’s a ton of great published material both about HPFs/LPFs and mixing practices that I won’t attempt to rewrite here, but the TL;DR is: HPFs can remove a portion of your subsonic or near subsonic frequency response that you don’t necessarily hear (often because your speaker cabinets/IEMs cannot reproduce it), yet eats up a massive amount of your amplified headroom and can cause effects and processors down the chain to behave in a less-optimized way than you might like; and LPFs can help to “tune” and focus your high-frequency response in a way you find more pleasing than what your instrument or signal chain natively outputs. The unique thing here is that each filter gets its own footswitch and status LED, along with variable frequency selector (38-310Hz for HPF, 330Hz-15kHz for LPF) and HPF output gain.

The HPF is likely to be something you fine-tune and set-and-forget, but here’s the interesting and unique value proposition that Ryan offered regarding the LPF, which I might not have considered: rather than treating both filters as one-time-set master filters, you might enjoy using the LPF more creatively as a 24dB slope, instantaneous “vibe change” effect for a drastically reduced high end response – say when switching to a MoTown song during your set, with precisely repeatable results – and then instantaneously switching your high end back in for your next, slap-happy tune. Used in this way, the pedal should be close to the beginning of, if not the first element in your signal chain, and you may indeed find the greatest value in leaving the HPF engaged full-time. I’d love to see an additional resonance control included to work in conjunction with the LPF (synth heads and the Wal/Alembic crowd will instantly understand) to increase the peak at the cutoff frequency chosen, which can start to really closely approximate the specific sonic fingerprints of different types of pickups and classic bass tones – effectively turning the Signal Filter into an incredibly highly adjustable filter-based preamp. Most filter preamps do not allow for the massive range of adjustment that this pedal already features; that would be an incredibly mighty eventual evolution!

VCA Compressor

The VCA Compressor happens to employ my personal favorite compression technology (vs FET, Opto, etc.), being the same type of compression featured in famous studio compressors like the SSL bus compressor, Neve 33609, and others. The stereotypically clean and transparent voltage-controlled amplifier method is utilized in Trickfish’s squeeze box, although that can be a bit of a conceptually confounding nomenclature. Instead of “amplifier,” think “regulator.” The VCA Compressor reacts to your input signal by regulating, or “turning down,” your input signal by varying amounts according to how you’ve set the Threshold control, offering convenient visual representation via the 10-segment LED strip.

Rather than select a hard and fast compression ratio from a small number of available options, the VCA Compressor gives you a continuously variable control between no compression at all above Threshold (1:1) and infinite compression; i.e. limiting, with the major milestones of 2.5:1, 4:1, and 6:1 demarcated along the way. Fully continuous controls are also provided for Blend and Level, which determine how much of your wet/dry signal is passed through to the output and the master volume of that blended output, respectively.

While control over attack and release is not possible on this pedal, Trickfish tells us the attack is around 40ms and the release around 200ms. These are relatively slow attack and long release speeds, again not dissimilar to the SSL bus, and allow for a nice initial transient to punch through the compressor’s variable net and a longer, more sustained and softened release to its hold on your signal once it has dropped below the user-set threshold. I found I didn’t miss not having domain over attack and release – quite the opposite, in fact; it was a bit liberating being allowed to worry about two fewer things while finding settings I enjoyed, and I really liked the way the VCA Compressor reacted to my playing! Using the Blend and Level knobs to perfect the amount of parallel compression was super effective and easy, and in feeding the tube pre-amp stage of my amp downstream, made for a glorious girthification of my tone. Single-coil players: you want this.

External Pre Amp (EPA)

Standing apart from Mike Pope’s Flexcore line of preamps that Trickfish now offers, the company’s in-house developed onboard preamp is dubbed the IPA, for Internal Pre Amp. Thus, it stands to reason that when placed into a pedal enclosure and located ex-bass, its name should rightly be modified to External Pre Amp, non? The EPA is a faithful rendition of the IPA preamp, but placed into the same rugged, metal box that the rest of the pedals in this line enjoy, and of course adding the possibility to apply to multiple passive instruments and to easily bypass via the stomp switch. The EPA even features the same internal dip switches that modify shelving bass boost/cut from 40Hz to 80Hz, mid boost/cut from 330Hz to 375Hz, 430Hz, or 500Hz, and shelving treble boost/cut from 4kHz to 8kHz.The front-mounted control potentiometers have the same center detent you’d expect from those of onboard controls.

While the ability to customize the center frequencies that these three bands work at is a feature I value highly, since basses and pickups can sound drastically different from each other and benefit from addition or subtraction of energy in different sonic areas, in the interest of time and initial user impression, we kept the internal dip switches set in the positions at which they shipped. There could clearly be an entirely separate review and video made to showcase all of the variables this preamp allows, but as a new user is presented with this set immediately upon receipt, testing in this configuration seemed the best way to go.

Overdrive Preamp

Ryan has a great story behind the creation of the Overdrive Preamp, which was born largely from his firsthand experience in a studio using a dual amp, bass-and-guitar combo setup for a blended dry/distorted signal. Taking that solution out on the road, he’d gig with a distorted Fender guitar amp (aside from his bass rig) that he’d blend in or out in real time via a signal split that kept his bass channel constant and a volume pedal feeding the Fender’s input!

To that end, the Overdrive Preamp is designed to maintain your dry signal, to whatever degree you deem necessary, and then blend in a fully separate, overdriven channel with 3-band EQ, Gain, and Output level controls. After setting the constant dry signal level as desired with the Blend knob, you’re meant to adjust the Gain to find just the right amount of chewy overdriven goodness (this isn’t a lead distortion or fuzz style pedal), and then separately adjust the volume of that overdrive channel with the Output control, which does not affect the dry level. This allows you to get the blend where you want it in terms of hearing and feeling a consistently present, clean bass signal, and then tailor the volume of the overdrive to taste. Once that’s all sounding great, you’ve then got a very usable 3-band EQ (Bass, Mid, Treble) to further boost or carve your soft-clipping chaos in those key areas of frequency response.

I found I enjoyed it most with the Gain set all the way up, Blend around noon or 1, and Output about 2, with a slight Bass boost and Mid/Treble cut. The addition of a full 3-way boost/cut equalizer makes this stompbox orders of magnitude more useful and usable, in my opinion, and sets it apart from so many other OD units out there. Being able to carefully sculpt that OD channel’s tone, and not just with a variable high cut or similar one-knob filter, opens up many more possibilities of pretty varied sounding saturated sounds – especially when playing with different Blend settings, as well.

Output

Kudos to Trickfish for releasing a quartet of useful, well-built, and great-sounding effect pedals, all at the same time. While at first blush, each may seem to fit into well-established bass effect archetypes, a closer glance reveals a subtle set of features that may just make the difference between a tonal choice from similar stomps, or a practical necessity in a certain use case that provides greater value for the player. They’re solid, do what they’re advertised to, and sound great in the process. They’re more than deserving to be stepped on by the likes of you or me.