Losing Bass Response/Attack in a diy FENDER BLENDER

[nego_veio]

I've made a Fender Blender to use with my Bass guitar, but i'm losing some serious bass response, even with the effect's blend knob set to "all bass, no fuzz". The bass guitar doesn't have the same attack if the effect is "on".
I've checked all the filters that i could possibly identify in the schematic and i could not notice any major bass frequency cuts.
Don't get me wrong, the effect works perfectly with a guitar and really have some bass response with the bass guitar, but it's not the same response/attack as in bypass.
anyone could help?

[kennyfinn]

hey dude I used this pedal on my bass as well. I'm actually in the process of modding it with an LED. Its part of the Octave effect. It has a slight lag. You can't wail an arpeggio or sweep with it.

[geertjacobs]

I guess this is a common problem with fuzz/distortion effects on bass guitar.
That's why things like the Bass Paralooper exist.
It adds a parallel clean path to your effect pedal, so you can dial some clean sound back in (with more low freq content).

Some effect pedals have such a parallel path with blend knob internally (voodoo labs sparkle drive), but having an external unit makes your setup a lot more flexible.

[Mark Hammer]

If you double the frequency of what you input, do not be surprised if the bass seems to be missing.

The solution is to blend in some of the unaltered signal with the fuzz.  Since you've done that and it doesn't seem to be enough, the solutin seems to be increasing the proportion of clean signal you can blend in.

Presently, the clean side comes from the junction of the 10k Sustain pot and a 680R resistor to ground.  That doesn't leave a whole lot of signal to blend in.  So, consider running a pair of 4k7 resistors from the input lug of the Sustain pot to the Blend control.  That is, you will now take your clean feed from the hot side of that pot rather than the ground side.

The reason why a pair of 4k7 resistors is used is so that you can run a cap to ground from their junction (I'll suggest .047uf for a 720hz rolloff) and lowpass filter the clean side.  If that still doesn't get you enough bottom to blend in, drop the value of the 4k7 after the cap to 2k2.