The Ground & Pound has been designed to combine the two pedals that Justin Chancellor uses to help achieve his signature distorted tone, the Turbo Rat with the Bass EQ, and it successfully combines them into a single box with a very compact and easy to use control layout.
We’ve also added a blend control, labelled ‘Mix‘, which has a very musical compression ratio (2:1) on the clean signal. This mixes very well with the distorted sound and just adds to the overall playing experience.
The Ground & Pound started as an idea to have a Rat style pedal and a Bass Equalizer combined into a single unit. The great advantage of this design is that one can explore the gritty character of the distortion while retaining its low end. Obviously, this was a starting point; the distortion has been carefully tailored and eq’d to have a full frequency spectrum, sounding full-bodied and cutthroat, and is very flexible due to its EQZ control.
The controls, 4 in total, feature an “EQZ” tilt equalizer, borrowed from the “Alma Comp” design, which affects only the distorted signal. The clean signal has some compression (with a very small (2:1) Ratio) that can be added to the distortion via the “Mix” control which really helps the clean and distorted sounds meld together in a more organic way. Finally, “Dis” controls the amount of gain, from fairly clean overdrive to heavy distortion, and “Vol” acts as the master volume.
The Ground & Pound, despite its original concept, is very versatile, when combining all the provided tools for tone shaping. It shines when using a pick and digging into the strings, at lighter gain settings, or it can smash your face in when using it at higher gain settings with both fingerstyle and pick.
• Top Mounted Jacks
• Wide gain spectrum from light overdrive to heavier distortion
• No Bass loss
• Dynamic touch sensitiveness
• Built-in compression (2:1) on the clean signal
• Equalizable distortion
• 9v to 18v operation
• Current draw 9.5 mA (9v); 19 mA(18v)
• Weight: 0.3kg
• Dimensions: 12.5 × 6.7 × 5.5 cm
