Fuzz Review: Fender Sub-Lime Bass Fuzz

Who: Fender
What: Sub-Lime Bass Fuzz
Price (MSRP/PAID): $199.99/$132.99 (New)
Battery: Yes
Power Supply: Yes
Size: 10″ X 4″ X 3.5″ (Approx: including Jacks and knobs)
Available from: Dealers

Comments:

I’ve been sitting on this pedal for a couple of months as I was a bit daunted about doing the demo. The large size and all the inset the controls (with the exception of the giant glowing knob on the front) made it a little tricky. I hope I’ve done a decent job capturing the pedal in the video. Ultimately it’s an excellent addition to the bass pedal universe; its affordable, sounds great, and provides a decent amount of tweak-ability. It’s got a smooth vintage vibe to it and frankly there are a lot of things about this pedal that point at it being marketed at the traditional bass player who is a bit curious about fuzz rather than the hard-core pedal divas that tend to come visit a place called bassfuzz.com.

It’s very flexible unit with the user selectable cross-over for the fuzz and control of the total drive and the tone of the fuzz sound. I expected to like the x-over freqeuncy control (30-300hz) a little more than I actually did, but it functions well and really gives you the feeling of more or less low-end as you play with the different settings.

The big glowing knob of fury is cool as hell, there is never any doubt where you have the pedal set or when it’s engaged. Basically, you set up the sound and feel of the pedal with the tone, x-over, and drive knobs. The big center knob acts as a ‘how much’ inside of the paradigm that you’ve already dialed in.

There are two possible negatives to this pedal and neither of them is related to how it sounds. This thing is absolutely gigantic! It’s longer than two boss pedals stacked end to end and wider! The “built like a tank” metaphor has been wildly overused to discuss big and heavy pedals, but this guy might set a new bar. It quickly moves into second place amongst all the pedals I currently own (the boomerang 3 is slightly bigger) and is by far the largest fuzz pedal I’ve ever used. The case is made from steel, and it weighs well over three pounds and the product container from Fender is a pretty big shoe box. The other issue is one of those, “it will work for some, but not for others” issues. All of the adjustments beyond the giant center knob are set into the case in some way and aren’t easy to adjust on the fly, with the ones on the back even requiring a screwdriver. This is great for gigging where you don’t want to have to worry about the details of settings being correct, but can be a little annoying for the tweaker.