In my experience with guitar pedals and amplifiers, almost 8 years, I was always looking for a tube amp tone in a single pedal.
The BB Preamp pedal from Xotic is by far the most mellow tube-like overdrive I’ve ever heard. It has so sensitive dynamics, it simply breathes together with your guitar. It’s not a high gain pedal that will turn your clean channel into crunch or lead (all knobs at noon) and I think thats the secret of it. Once you pass 12 o’clock on the gain knob you will hear the drive coming up.
I have two sets of amps that I’m using this pedal with, Bugera V55 and Bugera 6262. The V55 its a sort of Fender Hot Rod Deluxe clone with a clean and crunch channel and a fantastic reverb. The BB Preamp gives a Pink Floyd-ish compression to the clean channel and creamy sustain on the crunch. With the 6262 (Peavey 5150 II clone) its another story. The amp by itself is a high gain amp so u can hear those tubes breaking up already on the clean channel so with the BB you can get a clean boost of the raw tube power all the way up to a classic AC/DC drive. On a push of a button you have tons of gain and smooth sustain on the lead channel sort of, Steve Vai, Petrucci and so on.
When you step on it, with all the knobs set to noon, you will hear a good amount of boost on the mid freq. The thing I like the most about the BB Preamp is that it has treble and bass pots, so you can use it like overdrive, compressor, clean booster, and never get too muddy or harsh. It’s a pedal I definitely recommend!
Users: Andy Timmons
Submitted by Peter G, Instagram
