BBE Sonic Maximizers

[JohnnyGtar]

What do y'all think of the BBE Sonic Maximizers?

 

[Alpha Stryke]

Waste of money. I have a rack BBE sittin in the closet for 15 yrs.
Forum hype was why i bought it.

 

[Detroit1973]

They were great when i was 15-16 & didn't know how to dial in an amp. The More i learned about dialing in my amp from that time....it ended up in my closet & then sold.

 

[griff10672]

What do y'all think of the BBE Sonic Maximizers?

I'll build you the pedal version if you want

 

[JohnnyGtar]

I'll build you the pedal version if you want

I may take you up on that that down the road. Thanks, Griff!

 

[Dave L]

It does what it does, and absolutely works in moderation. If you want an extra bass knob and program-dependent brightness it can do it, but it can easily be too much. I think it was Steve Lukather who once said it´s like cocaine for your tone, and that´s coming from a dude that knows a thing or two about cocaine.

With that said it seems to work better with recorded tones or after a speaker emulation, sticking one in a FX loop or after a preamp doesn´t play as nice. That extreme harmonic treble content you have in a distorted guitar signal before the speakers round it off makes the BBE do weird things sometimes, since it tries to balance the treble to the mid range in some predetermined fashion. I think they stopped talking about it for later versions, but it can actually reduce treble if there´s too much already.

Whether the sales lingo of phase alignment and micro delays actually do anything, well, that´s up for debate. And the sucky bypass is sometimes said to be a feature, not a bug, so having it in a bypass loop is a given unless you want it on all the time.

 

[JohnnyGtar]

Was BBE still part of the company that owned G&L when Fender bought it?

 

[Fiesta Red]

That was a cool little pedal

 

[VonBonfire]

What do y'all think of the BBE Sonic Maximizers?

They can add a nice sparkle to the right rig.

 

[DanTravis62]

It does what it does, and absolutely works in moderation. If you want an extra bass knob and program-dependent brightness it can do it, but it can easily be too much. I think it was Steve Lukather who once said it´s like cocaine for your tone, and that´s coming from a dude that knows a thing or two about cocaine.

With that said it seems to work better with recorded tones or after a speaker emulation, sticking one in a FX loop or after a preamp doesn´t play as nice. That extreme harmonic treble content you have in a distorted guitar signal before the speakers round it off makes the BBE do weird things sometimes, since it tries to balance the treble to the mid range in some predetermined fashion. I think they stopped talking about it for later versions, but it can actually reduce treble if there´s too much already.

Whether the sales lingo of phase alignment and micro delays actually do anything, well, that´s up for debate. And the sucky bypass is sometimes said to be a feature, not a bug, so having it in a bypass loop is a given unless you want it on all the time.

This


I have a rack version, and ive used it for guitar, bass, drums, basically everything over the years, but its a "pick your spots" type of effect.


It can sound really, really good on a kick drum bus in a mixdown

It can also sound really, really good for a rhythm guitar tone

It just always needs to be in moderation and picking the correct spots for it

 

[ZEEGLER]

I haven't used mine in years. It just sits on a shelf in my basement collecting dust.

 

[Dave L]

As most of them do, for sure. Mine has been in and out - mostly out - of the rack since forever, but sits in the same box as an Aphex Exciter I can´t even remember ever plugging in for the time being. I used to use it for really clean and compressed tones, to bring back a little sparkle that´s squashed out by the DBX. But I mean, for fifty bucks there´s no harm in trying one, it can definitely do something good.

 

[angelspade]

Completely unnecessary piece of gear that had a brilliant marketing strategy at the very height of message board gear hype.

 

[Dave L]

Yeah, I think the modern metal dudes got into them maybe 20-25 years ago. At that point I suppose the original market of home/semipro analog recording rigs were drying up and BBE found a new niche.

My own experience with them stems from the very late 80s and early 90s big rock racks, I mentioned Luke above and Queensryche also used them a bit around Empire.

 

[jabps]

I had the rack version. Had to have it since all the big rack players at the time had them back in the day. See @angelspade response from above lol.

Fun to turn on at bedroom levels though to add some omph but I could never use them live. Once you got some volume going with gain it just didn't sound right.

However I did have the BBE Stinger pedal that mounted in my rack loop switcher when I used 5150 amps, I would use it on the clean channel only, it actually helped with the clean channel. That stinger pedal and a Dimension C pedal actually gave the OG 5150 a passable clean tone.