Bass Gear — Issue 7
Change Language:
F Bass Big F Boost Bass Pedal
The Company Line:
George Furlanetto is a very well respected luthier that began building “F instruments” in 1978 and continues to this day at the F bass shop in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.George has continually changed his company and instruments to meet with the demands and requests of players over the years. Following in this tradition, F bass announced that they would be releasing their famed preamp in a true-bypass, stompbox format for use with any instrument back in 2009. In January of 2010, F-Bass announced that they had finished their first run of the Big F Boost pedals – which had sold out before the run was even complete – and that they were already taking orders for their second batch. The response was obviously great, and we were lucky enough to get unit number twelve in to test out.
First Impressions
The Big F Boost is not necessarily a boost pedal, but is the F bass preamp in a pedal form, with knobs for Volume, Low, Mid and High. The F bass preamp is manufactured by PEEQ Research, also based in Hamilton, and was developed by Garry Poplawski. The F bass preamp is a boost-only preamp, with the EQ points set at 40Hz for the Low knob, 350Hz for the Mid knob, and 7kHz for the High knob. An advantage of a boostonly style preamp (especially this one, which has a volume knob) is that you can boost the EQ to your heart’s desire, while still being able to maintain the volume of your bypassed signal. George also has commented about his preamp being boost-only by saying, “When you work so hard to put all those good tones into a bass, why would you want to take any of that away?” The pedal is powered by either a 9-volt battery or by 9-18 volts via a centernegative power adaptor.The pedal is housed in a Hammond 1590BB enclosure with Switchcraft box style jacks, and the preamp PCB is securely attached to the top of the enclosure. Wiring of the pedal is done fairly cleanly, with nothing to complain about. The only thing that bugged me about the internal construction of the pedal – and it is admittedly a small niggle in the grand scheme of things – is that the battery is held in a cardboard sleeve within the enclosure, and pressed down on by a strip of foam in the lid of the pedal. I’d think that in a pedal in this price range, a clip isn’t too much to ask for. Again, at least for me, this is small potatoes since I use a power adaptor ninety-eight percent of the time and generally wouldn’t keep a battery in the pedal – except to cover the emergency style situation where I forgot a power adaptor, or something of that nature.The beauty of the F bass preamp is its transparency and ability to maintain the overall tonality of your instrument without overpowering it with its own color. I was able to use the Big F Boost pedal with a passive Precision bass, as well as a passive Jazz bass and loved the ability to add just a touch of what I needed without having to reach back for my amp to tweak things.It was also very useful for playing at a church with a passive bass.Generally speaking, there is no amp for tone shaping at the churches I play at, and this came in very handy for those situations – especially when the sound engineer asked for a little more or less of something. There is also a use for this pedal for those folks who play active basses. For me, it was having a couple of songs with small parts where slapping was required by the musical director. My general tone doesn’t work so well for slap. In those scenarios, it was great to be able to simply click a pedal on to achieve the slightly scooped tone I like while slapping, but then be able to quickly turn it off when the part was done.
Another use is, as the name of the pedal implies, as a boost pedal.With the volume knob, you can turn this pedal up past your bypassed volume and use it as a classic style clean boost, or you can use the preamp to boost your mids or highs for a solo to cut through a mix a bit more effectively or any combination of the EQ that you need for your particular situation.
Lasting Impressions
All in all, the Big F Boost is a great pedal that has a variety of uses for any bassist looking for a Swiss army knife style pedal that will cover several jobs on their pedalboard, depending on how they decide to use it. All that, plus having years of research and refinement at your feet backed by one of the big names in custom basses. You know…no big deal.
George Furlanetto is a very well respected luthier that began building “F instruments” in 1978 and continues to this day at the F bass shop in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.George has continually changed his company and instruments to meet with the demands and requests of players over the years. Following in this tradition, F bass announced that they would be releasing their famed preamp in a true-bypass, stompbox format for use with any instrument back in 2009. In January of 2010, F-Bass announced that they had finished their first run of the Big F Boost pedals – which had sold out before the run was even complete – and that they were already taking orders for their second batch. The response was obviously great, and we were lucky enough to get unit number twelve in to test out.
First Impressions
The Big F Boost is not necessarily a boost pedal, but is the F bass preamp in a pedal form, with knobs for Volume, Low, Mid and High. The F bass preamp is manufactured by PEEQ Research, also based in Hamilton, and was developed by Garry Poplawski. The F bass preamp is a boost-only preamp, with the EQ points set at 40Hz for the Low knob, 350Hz for the Mid knob, and 7kHz for the High knob. An advantage of a boostonly style preamp (especially this one, which has a volume knob) is that you can boost the EQ to your heart’s desire, while still being able to maintain the volume of your bypassed signal. George also has commented about his preamp being boost-only by saying, “When you work so hard to put all those good tones into a bass, why would you want to take any of that away?” The pedal is powered by either a 9-volt battery or by 9-18 volts via a centernegative power adaptor.The pedal is housed in a Hammond 1590BB enclosure with Switchcraft box style jacks, and the preamp PCB is securely attached to the top of the enclosure. Wiring of the pedal is done fairly cleanly, with nothing to complain about. The only thing that bugged me about the internal construction of the pedal – and it is admittedly a small niggle in the grand scheme of things – is that the battery is held in a cardboard sleeve within the enclosure, and pressed down on by a strip of foam in the lid of the pedal. I’d think that in a pedal in this price range, a clip isn’t too much to ask for. Again, at least for me, this is small potatoes since I use a power adaptor ninety-eight percent of the time and generally wouldn’t keep a battery in the pedal – except to cover the emergency style situation where I forgot a power adaptor, or something of that nature.The beauty of the F bass preamp is its transparency and ability to maintain the overall tonality of your instrument without overpowering it with its own color. I was able to use the Big F Boost pedal with a passive Precision bass, as well as a passive Jazz bass and loved the ability to add just a touch of what I needed without having to reach back for my amp to tweak things.It was also very useful for playing at a church with a passive bass.Generally speaking, there is no amp for tone shaping at the churches I play at, and this came in very handy for those situations – especially when the sound engineer asked for a little more or less of something. There is also a use for this pedal for those folks who play active basses. For me, it was having a couple of songs with small parts where slapping was required by the musical director. My general tone doesn’t work so well for slap. In those scenarios, it was great to be able to simply click a pedal on to achieve the slightly scooped tone I like while slapping, but then be able to quickly turn it off when the part was done.
Another use is, as the name of the pedal implies, as a boost pedal.With the volume knob, you can turn this pedal up past your bypassed volume and use it as a classic style clean boost, or you can use the preamp to boost your mids or highs for a solo to cut through a mix a bit more effectively or any combination of the EQ that you need for your particular situation.
Lasting Impressions
All in all, the Big F Boost is a great pedal that has a variety of uses for any bassist looking for a Swiss army knife style pedal that will cover several jobs on their pedalboard, depending on how they decide to use it. All that, plus having years of research and refinement at your feet backed by one of the big names in custom basses. You know…no big deal.
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