Ultimate Sheehan
Onstage and in the studio, bass virtuoso Billy Sheehan runs a sophisticated bass rig, splitting his signal to achieve his signature sound. The EBS Billy Sheehan Ultimate Signature Drive pedal distills the essential ingredients of Billy’s signal chain — compression, distortion, tone shaping, and blending — into a bass pedal like no other. The Billy Sheehan Ultimate has two channels — Clean and Drive — and allows you to blend them together to create your own signature sound. Each channel has its own effects loop for coloring your tone with external effects. An exciting new feature of the EBS Billy Sheehan Ultimate Signature Drive pedal is the Hi/Lo Frequency range switch that shifts the entire frequency spectrum of the Tone filter up or down, vastly extending the pedal’s tone-shaping power.
Shift the range of the Tone control
EBS released the original Billy Sheehan Signature Drive pedal in 2013, and it’s been updated a few times. All the versions have found favor among bassists at Sweetwater. The Billy Sheehan Ultimate ups the ante with a major new feature: a Hi/Lo Frequency range switch that shifts the frequency spectrum of the Tone filter up or down to extend its range. The main benefit of this is twofold: the Hi setting adds a whole new palette of distortion sounds, while the Lo setting lets you explore various flavors of aggressive punch and growl.
Kick it up a notch
The key to Billy’s sound is a split signal path. The EBS Billy Sheehan Ultimate Signature Drive pedal splits your signal into two parallel paths (one clean and one with distortion), as if you’re running your sound through two different bass rigs at the same time — just as Billy does. Independent level controls for the Clean and Drive channel let you mix the signal paths together. For a tight, punchy tone, kick in the onboard compressor. An internal control lets you preset the threshold parameter to your preferences. With more extreme distortion settings, low end can be lost due to phase cancellation, so EBS provides a Phase Inverter switch to add more bottom back in to the Drive channel. There’s also a Boost footswitch to kick the drive gain up a notch when needed.
Mix external effects on Clean and Drive channels individually
Separate effects loops for each channel can be used to color the channels with external effects individually. The Clean Loop jack can also be used as a clean input if your bass has stereo outputs. Run the lows through the Clean Loop jack with the mids/highs plugged into the main input; this leaves the lows unprocessed and only the higher frequencies treated with overdrive. Bottom line: If you want to nail Billy Sheehan’s uniquely aggressive sound, you don’t need massive dual-amp rigs. All you need is the EBS Billy Sheehan Ultimate Signature Drive pedal.
EBS Billy Sheehan Ultimate Signature Drive Pedal Features:
- Analog bass pedal with relay-type switching
- NEW Hi/Lo Frequency range switch
- Boost Drive footswitch
- Phase Inverter switch
- Drive, Clean, Tone, and Level pots
- Compressor Modes: High, Mid, Off
- Clean Loop and Drive Loop TRS jacks
- NEW Magnet-type footswitches
- Advanced internal features include
- Replaceable Drive circuit, Fine-tuning trimmers for Threshold and (Mid) Compression, Trim pot for setting Boost switch level
- Power: 9-volt DC battery or EBS AD9 Pro Power Supply (available separately)
