Lehle GmbH RMI ENHANCED OVERDRIVE

The RMI ENHANCED OVERDRIVE is a bass overdrive pedal made by Lehle, sold under the RMI Basswitch name as the Basswitch Enhanced Overdrive. Lehle's manual describes it as a pedal that "combines a high-quality preamp with a complex gain stage that produces the overdrive," placing it as much a preamp as a drive pedal for bass players. The pedal is discontinued.¹

What it does

The gain stage covers a wide range. Lehle describes the sweep as running "from subtle harmonics inspired by the compressed valves of a bass amplifier, to warm and pleasant saturation, and even up to a brute distorted signal."² In practice that spans light overdrive texture through to sounds that reach toward distortion territory, all shaped for bass frequencies rather than guitar.

The pedal has four controls, and Lehle says their "intuitive operation... makes it simple to find a great sound, due to the intelligent linking of parameters."² The manual details one of them: the GAIN control sets the intensity of the overdrive, and it amplifies both the saturated and the original signal, so a change in overall volume is to be expected as GAIN is turned up.¹

Input headroom and power

Two design points stand out for bass players:

• Active and passive inputs: The pedal is built to process signals from both passive and active pickup systems, so no input padding switch is needed.¹
• Internal 18 V operation: The external input voltage of 9 to 15 V is rectified, then filtered, stabilized and doubled to 18 V inside the pedal. Lehle says this "guarantees the necessary headroom to handle high peak levels and makes an active/passive switch redundant."²

Build

Lehle describes the pedal as having an "extremely robust construction with its protected controls and indestructible switching mechanism."² The protected controls and heavy-duty switching are aimed at players who put pedals on the road and expect them to survive it.

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