A Bass Overdrive Worth Keeping: The Animals Pedal Surfing Polar Bear

I bought this pedal after only listening to a YouTube review. It was under £100, it had more interesting top end and gritty breakup than the other overdrives in the video, and I ordered it before finding out it was a bass overdrive.

It's a Tube Screamer-style circuit voiced for bass: two 4558 op amps, soft clipping diodes and large capacitor values that let the low end through. There's no mid hump, so it doesn't sound like a Tube Screamer.

The tone knob. It sweeps around 2kHz, a treble roll-off on bass but upper mids on guitar. It also changes the clipping inside the pedal, so it acts as a second gain control. Gain down and tone down is a properly usable overdrive setting.

Against my usual pedals. Next to the Blues Driver it sounds more hi-fi and compressed, with more bass and less upper-mid cut. Compared with the Rat it has more top end and volume, and sounds more like an amp than a pedal. My Hamilton Effects Faded Twin has a similar sizzle, but the Polar Bear has more drive. The Faded Twin as a clean parallel boost into the Polar Bear is a great pairing.

Design takeaways.

• A tone control placed before clipping doubles as a gain control.

• Voicing matters more than the circuit name.

• Low gain settings are worth designing for.

It's going on my board.