Billy Sheehan Ultimate Drive

EBS Billy Sheehan Ultimate Signature Drive. If you ever wanted a setup where you can blend a clean bass rig with a distorted, but can’t afford to have two rigs. This is the ultimate solution for you!

“This pedal is a distillate of several important principles in the signal chain for bass. Compression, distortion, tone-shaping and blending all together.” – Billy Sheehan

Mix the Clean with a Distorted signal path
Since the pedal splits the signal into two parallel paths – one clean and one with distortion – it becomes as if running the sound through two different bass rigs at the same time. The two Clean and Drive Level controls decides how you set the mix and melt the paths together. For a tighter, more defined sound you can engage the built-in compressor. Threshold settings for the compressor can be adjusted inside.

Bring back more low-end and boost the gain when needed
A Phase Inverter switch brings back more low-end to the drive channel in cases when phase cancellation appears. The Boost footswitch kicks up the drive gain a notch when needed.

Extend the range of the Tone Control
The new and major feature of the Ultimate version is the Hi or Lo Frequency Filter. This switch moves the whole frequency spectrum of the Tone filter up or down, to extend the capabilities of the pedal.

The Hi setting adds a whole new palette of distortion sounds that was not possible to create with previous versions of the pedal.

Mix in effects on the Clean and Drive channel separately
The individual Effect Loops for each channel can be used to color the channels individually with external effects. The Clean Loop jack can also be used as a clean input if you have a bass that features dual outputs. It sounds great if you run the lows through the Clean Loop jack while the mids/highs go through the main input, which leaves the lows untouched and only the higher frequencies treated by the drive.

Inherited features
This version has inherited all the features from the Deluxe version (including the possibility to swap the drive chip without the need of soldering). But the palette of sounds you can create is expanded by the new Hi or Lo frequency filter to make it complete.

Billy Sheehan’s introduction to the Ultimate Signature pedal: