Today we are releasing the 0xEAE Bass Driver. This is the latest installment in our collaborative series of aluminum doomsday devices co-designed with Obstructures. With the impending release of their new bass this year, we sought to produce a worthy companion pedal.
The Bass Driver is available worldwide while supplies last. We have an exclusive fully anodized launch edition available on our website. The two-tone anodized/raw aluminum standard edition is available through our dealer network for immediate shipment, and on our website as a preorder shipping by May 1.
On a bittersweet note, this is also the final installment in the series and is therefore being released in a finite quantity. For the sake of transparency, I’ll elaborate below. If you want to learn more, skip ahead to “The Fate of the 0xEAE Line.”
Everyone knows we love our clangy noise rock and post-hardcore tones. And there’s no better bass amp for this than the Traynor TS series amps of the 1970s. However, these amps have a limited EQ range which makes them rather one-dimensional. So, for this pedal we decided to put our own spin on the TS series sound. We broke apart the mid-scooped tone controls of the original preamp and added a powerful active Bass control to boost frequencies 100Hz and below. Not only does this add a thunderous low end extension, it eliminates the need for a clean blend entirely. (My personal crusade against clean blends is perhaps better discussed another time.) A conceptually simple change to low frequency gain staging dramatically re-voices the sound, keeping some signature elements while making it much more versatile.
Anyway, enough yapping. Be sure to check out our launch video plus all the excellent demo videos from our collaborators.
The Fate of the 0xEAE Line
The Bass Driver is the final installment in this series and is therefore being released in a finite quantity. Once these are gone, no more will be produced in this form.
While we make every effort to avoid limited run products, during development we reached the unfortunate conclusion that manufacturing this format is no longer sustainable. Custom enclosure casting has become prohibitively expensive due to rising metal costs, primarily driven by the recent surge in tariffs—which, at the time of this post, now exceed 50% for some countries. Rather than cancel the project altogether or fight the uphill battle of passing these costs onto our customers, we decided to make a graceful exit with the inventory we have on hand.
As for immediate future plans, we will be releasing final batches of the 0xEAE Boost and 0xEAE Fuzz later this spring. We will announce last call when these batches are ready. After that, we plan to fold these circuits (or at least, core aspects of them) into our main pedal line. If you like the sound but end up missing out on this release, fear not. They will be back in a new form.
Finally, this should go without saying, but collaborating with the Obstructures team for the last few years has been incredibly gratifying. We are leaving the door open to more collaborations in the future, but for now, be sure to check out their incredible instruments.
Thanks for sticking with us.
-John & co