Trickfish releases four bass stompbox pedals, built in the USA

March 25, 2024 · 2 sources

Trickfish announced the release of its new line of bass pedals on March 25, 2024, according to Bass Musician Magazine¹. The line comprises the VCA Compressor, Overdrive Preamp, External Preamp (EPA) and Signal Filter, which the maker says are designed and manufactured by Trickfish in the USA¹.

All four pedals share a high-quality angled steel chassis, smooth taper knobs, top-mounted jacks, easy to read graphics and standard 9V DC pedalboard power supply-compatible jacks, per the announcement¹. Retail pricing is $249 for the VCA Compressor, $229 for the Overdrive Preamp, and $219 each for the Signal Filter and External Preamp¹.

A later review on Bass Gear Mag describes the four as uniformly sized, sturdy steel enclosures with top-mounted input and output jacks in identical placement and the same latching footswitches with blue status LEDs². The Signal Filter's high-pass and low-pass filters each get their own footswitch and status LED, along with a variable frequency selector (38-310Hz for the HPF, 330Hz-15kHz for the LPF) and HPF output gain². Its listed specifications include a 9V DC center pin negative supply, 7 mA current draw, 1M Ohm input and 100k Ohm output impedance, 1.0 lb weight and a one-year warranty².

The VCA Compressor's controls are Threshold, Ratio, Blend and Level, with a 10-segment LED for gain reduction and a latching footswitch for engage/bypass². The review lists its current draw at 186 mA and its price at $249². The review says the Overdrive Preamp keeps the dry signal and blends in a separate overdriven channel with 3-band EQ, Gain and Output level controls². It describes the EPA as a rendition of Trickfish's in-house IPA onboard preamp in a pedal enclosure, with internal dip switches that modify shelving bass boost/cut from 40Hz to 80Hz, mid boost/cut from 330Hz to 375Hz, 430Hz or 500Hz, and shelving treble boost/cut from 4kHz to 8kHz².