Cusack Screamer Bass

The Cusack Screamer Bass is a bass overdrive pedal from Cusack Music, built as the bass version of the company's Screamer line. Cusack describes it as "a Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive just like our renowned Screamer V2," with the circuit adapted for bass guitar rather than simply rehousing the guitar pedal¹.

What that adaptation is meant to achieve is stated plainly by the maker: the Screamer Bass "adds grit while preserving the transient peaks from picking, plucking, and slapping"¹. For a bassist, that is the central promise of the pedal: an overdrive that thickens the note with dirt without flattening the attack that makes bass playing articulate, whether fingerstyle, picked or slapped.

A Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive for bass

The Screamer family at Cusack Music begins with the Cusack Screamer, which the company calls "our take on a classic overdrive" and, on a related page, "one of the most renowned TS inspired pedals on the planet"³⁴. The guitar versions set the template the Screamer Bass follows.

Cusack describes the guitar Screamer as a "clean" overdrive with about twice the gain of a typical Tube Screamer, offering more clarity than a typical overdrive². The same design philosophy carries into the bass version: the pedal is voiced to add grit rather than to bury the note, which matters more on bass where low-end definition is the difference between a driven sound and a muddy one.

The Tube Screamer circuit itself has a known property that explains why it translates well to this kind of drive. A technical analysis by GuitarPCB, citing Bogac Topaktas, notes that the Tube Screamer's clipped output signal "contains part of the input signal, preserving the original dynamics of the guitar, improving clarity and responsiveness of the distortion"⁵. That blended clipping is what lets a Tube Screamer-style circuit keep picking dynamics audible, and it is the behavior Cusack points to when describing the Screamer Bass as preserving transient peaks.

The pedal sits in a compact enclosure, 4.42 inches long by 2.39 wide by 1.24 high, so it takes up little board space for a bass pedalboard¹.

The controls

The control set is deliberately small: two knobs and one toggle.

There is no Tone knob, unlike the guitar-oriented Screamer V2 and V3, whose Tone control sets the tonal balance with bassier to the left and brighter to the right⁶. Leaving tone shaping off the panel is consistent with the pedal's aim on bass: the grit is added, and the instrument's own low end is left alone.

What the clipping toggle does

The three-way toggle selects which diodes shape the overdrive. Silicon, asymmetrical LED and Schottky diodes each clip the signal differently, changing the character and feel of the drive at the same Drive setting¹. The same three-way arrangement appears across the Cusack Screamer line: the Screamer V2 carries the identical left-silicon, center-asymmetrical-LED, right-Schottky toggle², and Premier Guitar's review of the V2 described its 3-position clipping toggle, which selects between standard, "crushed," and asymmetrical LED clipping, as adding "a welcome w" of tonal variety⁷. On the Screamer Fuzz V3, the equivalent Clip toggle switch selects silicon (Si), schottky (SBD), or asymmetrical LED clipping on the Screamer half of the pedal⁸.

A comparable idea appears elsewhere in the Screamer-adjacent world: the JHS 3 Series Screamer uses a two-way clipping toggle, and Hungry Robot's Mosfet Screamer has a toggle that selects between two sets of clipping diodes for subtle changes in gain structure. Cusack's version offers three voiced options rather than two⁹¹⁰¹¹.

Power and current draw

The Screamer Bass runs on a standard center negative 9V DC supply or a 9V battery, and neither is included with the pedal¹. Current draw is approximately 8mA¹, low enough that it can sit comfortably on a shared or isolated output of a typical multi-output supply.

For comparison within the family, the draw is slightly higher than the guitar Screamer V3 at ~6mA⁶² and slightly lower than the Screamer V2 at ~9mA⁶².

Related Cusack pedals

Cusack Music has built the Screamer circuit out into a family of pedals, and the Screamer Bass page itself points bass players toward one of them: "Not enough gain for you? Check out the Screamer Fuzz Bass!"¹

Screamer Fuzz Bass (discontinued). Like the Screamer Bass, its Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive is modified for bass guitar, but with an additional fuzz circuit, and the overdrive and fuzz can be mixed to taste¹². Its controls are Level (volume) and Scream (gain), plus the same three-way clipping toggle: left silicon, center asymmetrical LED, right Schottky. It drew about 7mA and ran on the same 9V DC center negative or battery arrangement. Cusack Music lists it as discontinued¹², so it is available only secondhand.

Screamer Fuzz V3. The current overdrive-and-fuzz pedal in the line, combining the tone of the Screamer Fuzz V2 with an added low-pass tone control⁸. Pedal of the Day's review noted you can "select either silicon (Si), schottky (SBD), or asymmetrical LED clipping on the Screamer half of the pedal," and that with the Screamer control all the way down "it's a gnarly" fuzz pedal¹³.

Screamer Fuzz V2 and Germanium. The V2 packages the Screamer V2's tone, minus the Tone knob, with a fuzz circuit¹⁴. The Germanium version is described by Cusack as "a new take on our classic Screamer Fuzz"¹⁵.

Screamer Fuzz Selenium. A limited version built around vintage selenium rectifiers, in a run of 20 pedals that sold out immediately¹⁶. Cusack has said it hopes to source a modern component that can deliver the sound of those vintage rectifiers but has found nothing like them¹⁷.

Screamer Fuzz Bass. Cusack suggests this pedal for bass players who want more gain than the Screamer Bass provides¹. Like the Screamer Bass, it is Tube Screamer-inspired overdrive modified for bass guitar, but with an additional fuzz circuit¹².

Guitar World reviewed the original Screamer and Screamer Fuzz together in 2008, finding that "both pedals make amazingly natural fuzz and overdrive sounds in a '60s vein, with the Screamer Fuzz throwing in some coo" broken-amp simulations¹⁸. That review also noted a practical battery detail: at approximately 6.5V the pedal goes into bypass until the battery is changed¹⁸, a behavior worth knowing if you run any Screamer-family pedal on a fading battery.

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