Sonicake BOOM Ave.

The Sonicake BOOM Ave. is a multi-effects bass pedal from Sonicake that gathers what the maker calls the four essentials for bass playing into one bar: a BOOST/COMP, a FUZZ, a PREAMP and an OCTAVE. It sits on the board as a complete front-end for a bass rig, with an FX loop after the preamp section for hooking up other effects and an XLR output for directly connecting to a PA, mixer or audio interface.¹

The four modules

Each module covers one job a bass player usually needs a separate pedal for, and each links to its own corner of the effects world:

• BOOST/COMP: a volume boost and a compressor in one module, the always-on pair many bass players use to even out dynamics and lift solos.¹
• FUZZ: Sonicake describes it as pretty standard, "Think about Russian Muff with some additional EQ twist."²
• PREAMP: an analog preamp with 3-band EQ that Sonicake says "recreates the Legendary Ampeg Style Tone, from Dynamic Clean to Classic Rock Bass Sound."¹
• OCTAVE: a dual sub octave that produces notes one and two octaves lower, with a blend between the original dry signal and the octaves.¹

The fuzz and preamp are the two modules with a clear family resemblance. The fuzz points at the Russian Muff, the big-bodied Soviet-built version of the fuzz circuit known for a thick, scooped take on the design, and Sonicake adds its own EQ twist on top. The preamp is analog rather than modeled, with a 3-band EQ aimed at the Ampeg style of bass tone, the sound associated with classic rock bass through an Ampeg rig.¹

The octave module works as a sub octave generator rather than a polyphonic pitch shifter: it tracks the notes you play and adds them one and two octaves down, and the dry blend control sets how much of your untouched bass signal sits underneath the octaves.¹

FX loop and outputs

The BOOM Ave. places its FX loop after the preamp section, so other pedals connected through the loop come after the tone shaping rather than before it. The XLR output lets the pedal feed a PA, mixer or audio interface directly, which makes it usable as a front-end for silent recording or a direct-to-FOV live setup without a separate direct box.¹

Power and practicalities

The pedal runs on 9V DC center negative and the power supply is included in the box. Its current consumption is 60mA, so a shared daisy-chain supply needs enough headroom for it alongside the rest of the board.¹

Physically it is a long bar at 262mm deep, 64mm wide and 44mm high, weighing 500g, in the same multi-effects bar format as Sonicake's other units such as the Sonicake RockStage and Sonicake Matribox II.¹

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