Ashdown Engineering OriginAL Valve Pre Bass Tube Preamp DI Pedal

The OriginAL Valve Pre-DI Pedal is a valve driven pre-amplifier pedal like no other.

After a trivial name change, Ashdown are pleased to introduce: The OriginAL Valve Pre-DI Pedal.

It’s all about the tone shaping with a preamp pedal. Shaping, sculpting and optimising bass tone before it hits the power stage is something that Ashdown are well versed in, having provided bassists with the best possible tone for two solid decades. 

With their long spanning legacy in British bass amplification, Ashdown have taken things back to the key fundamentals of everything that makes a great bass amp with The OriginAL bass head. Offered in a beautifully formatted pedal form, The OriginAL Valve Pre-DI Pedal is a valve driven pre-amplifier pedal like no other.

Like all good pre-amp pedals, The OriginAL beautifully shapes the bass player’s clean signal whilst offering a foot-switchable valve powered overdrive in a single compact unit. Setting it apart from others, The OriginAL delivers superb quantities of both clean and overdriven bass tone, without one feature outshining the other. Crystal clear cleans and powerful overdriven growl – The OriginAL encompasses it all. 

Starting in the top right corner, the -3dB Pad switch determines whether the pedal is being used with a high or low output instrument and sets a clear signal path to the independent input control. With the signal at its optimal level, you then hit a defined set of features designed to enhance your tone. The OriginAL features a tried and tested, non-gimmicky 5-band EQ, varying the bass, low-mid, middle, hi-mid and treble. 

The ‘Drive Gain’ control lets the player dial in the precise level of gain required, whilst the ‘Drive Level’ knob allows you to decide just how much you want. Dependent on your playing style and attack, by tweaking the Drive Gain and Level controls in harmony, you can range from a subtle gritty valve depth that can be used regularly, to a fully responsive bass overdrive for when those moments strike. 

Whatever your desired output, the 12AX7 powered Valve Drive switch can be selected instantly by foot.

The output control regulates the output volume of the preamp pedal, whilst on the rear-end of the pedal, a DI out allows for the pedal to be fed the house, post EQ/Drive. A handy Ground Lift on the front of the pedal reduces the associated noise when connecting two signal paths.

Rounding off the feature-set on the 18-volt OriginAL pedal is an extremely useful headphone socket allowing for silent practice during those late night hotel room rehearsals, whilst the Line Input means you can jam along with your favourite tracks – the perfect practice device.

Valve driven pre-amplifier pedal like no other.

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.

Power Supply
The ORIGINal Pre-amplifier requires a Linear Isolated High quality Regulated power supply that can supply a current 300mA at a voltage of 15-18V DC Centre Pin NEGATIVE for the fitted 2.1mm connector socket. Since most Professional pedal board power supplies have outputs at 9V and 18V the pedal is marked at 18V. The pedal reduces the incoming power supply down to 12v suitable to drive the Valve and internal circuits, for the internal stabilisation to be fully effective the connected power supply should be between 15-18V DC as stated…