chrisdesign's Metal Pedalboard

Before my experience was with the Line 6 Helix’s compressors. They work fine but I never felt any wow. I just don’t see what the obsession is about. Then I tried The Custard Factory.

I am a weekend warrior, gigging once every month or two in the local scene in an alternative rock band. I play a Thunderbird 5 string and need a solid foundation.

From the moment I turned on The Custard Factory my tone improved immensely! Compression is famously hard to describe, but for me turning the off is like dialling my tone knob back. It just sounds great! My first thought was “I wish I had brought this pedal as soon as it was released”. This is my always on pedal!

The controls are simple to use in a way that the Helix’s aren’t. I literally just messed around and found a great tone in seconds that trashed the more complex studio style compressors I’ve used before. Intuitive is the name of the game. I’m a chartered Human Factors Specialist, and I approve of the designer’s excellent work!

I love that the pedal has a high quality buffer of 1 Meg input, 100k output. It means I need not buy a buffer pedal. Yet the best feature for me is the presence knob. I can dial in a subtle setting to help me stand out in the mix while still fulfilling the bass role.

The construction is solid and the graphics are really nicely printed. I feel this pedal can take some beating, but frankly, it won’t because it’s an always on compressor that never gets stamped on in a gig. Anyway, I’m glad to feel it can withstand an onslaught night after night.

The pedal is also dead silent. There is zero noise even at high compression. The blend knob lets you tame the compression squish in an awesome way. Is a pedal that just works!

While The Custard Factory is pretty unknown in the bass world, I can imagine this being a forever pedal.

On a p bass it gives everything a thick smoothness that is very nice. The blend lets you dial this back to taste, and the presence cuts through. I love it!

If you want a walk of bass thickening your sound, then maybe something like the MXR M87 is better. The custard factory is more transparent like a tool than the MXR’s colouring. That’s not a bad thing at all, and both pedals have their place.

This bass is giant! It looks stunning, is solid as a rock, and can sound very good. However, mine can with too many issues.

The neck is 2” wide! The pickups are too narrow to capture the B and G properly. The preamp is forgettable and, according to some people, boost the wrong frequencies. On my model, an idiot in the factory wired the random red leads to ground creating hum. This is easy to fix by desoldering the red wires, but now I want to know what that red wire is for! There was so much potential.

To make this bass great: - ensure the red wire is desoldered from the ground - move neck strap button to behind the neck (reduce neck dive) - replace tuners with ultra light ones (reduce neck dive) - replace the preamp with a better designed one

What killed it for me is the weight. It’s too heavy to do a three your set.

What it does it does perfectly. It just sounds awesome, especially when you load impulse responses.

Issues. The wrong input impedance means I must run a buffer before this processor. That should never be necessary. The DSP is limited and the compressors have no gain reduction monitoring, so I must use external stomps before and in the loop. Again, this is unnecessary and something the bigger Helix’s don’t need to worry about.

This pedal has been on my board and in my life since 2008, and I cannot see myself replacing it any time soon. It just works great! Sure the new Peterson tuners are more accurate at 0.1 cents over 1 cent, but human hearing is limited to 2 cents, and guitars are imprecise instruments by nature, so I’m good.

This power supply just works. It comes with a silly amount of connections so you’ll always be able to power every pedal.

Having 500 mA per socket is great as it powers pretty much every pedal on current.

The downside is no 18v socket.

The tone capsule saved my gig! The sound engineer refused to DI my Helix and insisted I run through a keyboard amp he mic’d up already. Short story shorter, I dialed in to a great tone with my tone capsule. The two mids and a bass are perfect, targeting the exact frequencies I need to modify on the fly. Also, the Q is wonderful. Cuts and boosts just sound right. I struggle to replicate them on a parametric EQ, and am thankful I have a tone capsule in my bass.

With these tones I can sculpt my sound really well, making my Thunderbird closer to a P-bass or Stingray. It will never be THE SAME, but it will be in close enough ball park for the audience not to care.

I haven’t played a Klon (real) so I have no idea how close it is to the original. However, it does the job of boosting and adding a little dirt very well. For the money it’s incredible!