WALRUS AUDIO Badwater Bass Preamp Pedal Instruction Manual
- June 3, 2024
- WALRUS AUDIO
Table of Contents
WALRUS AUDIO Badwater Bass Preamp Pedal Instruction
OVERVIEW
The Badwater is a bass tone magnification device sonically highlighting what makes bass so crucial to music. The all-inone bass pre-amp and DI features optical compression, overdrive, and a four-band EQ section. Enhance your bass rig’s capabilities by dialing in everything from warm cleans to gritty chords and punchy drives to bright and crisp slap sounds.
Volume
The Vol knob sets the overall output volume of the pedal. The Badwater has quite a bit of volume on tap so the Volume knob will be helpful to find the sweet spot for interacting with the rest of your rig.
Sustain
The internal optical compressor is first in the signal path, and always turned on. The Sustain control lets you add in compression for long sustaining notes and chords while smoothing out your transients. With Sustain at minimum, the compressor will have minimal effect, but as you increase, you will start to hear longer notes and squashed transients.
Low
Allows you to boost or cut low frequencies by +/- 12dB to beef up your signal or tame the low end.
Low Mid & LMF
Allows you to boost or cut by +/-10 dB and sweep from 500 Hz to 2.4 kHz.
High Mid & HMF
Allows you to boost or cut by +/- 10 dB and sweep from 3.5 kHz to 7.5 kHz.
High
Allows you to boost or cut high frequencies by +/- 12dB to bring sparkle and clarity or smoothen it out.
Drive
Sets the amount of gain applied to your signal through the drive section: from minimal breakup to driven distortion.
Voice: Lets you select between 3 options for how much low and high frequency content is allowed into the drive section. The top voice allows more HF into the drive, the middle allows a middle range of frequencies into the drive, and the bottom allows the most LF into the drive.
Blend: The Blend knob allows you to blend between your fully clean and fully distorted signal. With this control at minimum, the output is your original fully clean input with no distortion. As you turn the knob to the right, more distortion is added. At maximum, the output is the fully distorted signal with no clean blended in. Blending the clean and distorted signals can allow you to increase note clarity as the clean and dirty channels run parallel to each other inside of the Badwater.
Level: Adjust the level of the drive section, so when you turn on the drive, you can either boost, cut, or continue playing at unity gain.
Bypass Switch: Turns the entire effect on or off.
Bypass LED: Illuminated when the effect is engaged.
Drive Switch: Turns the drive section of the effect on or off.
Drive LED: Illuminated when the drive section is engaged.
Input Jack: 1/4 inch cable from instrument.
Output Jack: 1/4 inch cable to amplifier.
XLR Jack: Badwater features both 1/4 inch and XLR out options, so you’re always ready with a usable bass rig. Use the XLR to connect directly to the front-of-house or use the 1/4 inch out to run to an amp. Both outputs can be run simultaneously for direct and live amp stage monitoring. The Badwater does not accept power from phantom power. Phantom power will be blocked out and will not damage the Badwater, but it is best to avoid turning on phantom power when the unit is connected.
GND Lift: Isolates the GND pin on XLR to help reduce hum if present. Leave out for normal operation.
9v Jack: 9-volt DC, Center Negative, 300mA min.
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