The Xotic BB Preamp is part of a trio of boost pedals offered from these effects gurus. The “Bluesbeaker” model has the most gain of the three and is capable of going from smooth vintage Marshall tones to hi gain crunch! Today I’m going to take a test drive and see how this overdrive pedal compares to others stompboxes. The overall design of the Xotic BB Pre is sleek because it has four knobs stuffed into the smallest box possible. That’s nice if you don’t have a lot of room on your pedalboard. The controls are Volume, Gain and there is an active EQ for Bass and Treble capable of +/- 15dB . This pedal can provide over 30dB of clean boost as well, which is consistent with the RC and AC Booster as well.
My first test was to get a clean boost out of the pedal by rolling the Volume up and turning the Gain all the way down. With a flat EQ (straight up where the detented pot locks in) this pedal drove my tube amp into a nice natural overdrive, adding sustain and headroom without coloring the guitar’s tone. With that much output, you can drive any small wattage amp into creamy distortion without even raising the gain. Next, I fattened up the tone by boosting the Bass and warmed up the high end by cutting the Treble. If you want to keep your Strat sounding plunky, this is the setting for you. I really love the feature of active electronics instead of a passive tone knob. Now for the real test, I raised the gain halfway and lowered the Volume to unity gain. The sound was thick and warm with a slight midrange bump, not gritty at all. I could easily get some heavy sustain or Brian May tones by rolling back the Treble. The drive is definitely tube like and it’s possible to get some vintage tones at this setting. As I maxed the Gain knob, it entered a new arena of distorted tones that make the Xotic BB Preamp one of the most versatile overdrive/distortion pedals around. For the modern player, you won’t have trouble getting enough low end crunch and over the top lead tones. I must say, I really thought the range and color of this pedal was a notch above the rest. The folks at Xotic Effects really did their homework on this one.