Hey everyone, I’m just curious what your go-to filter and blend settings are for the Sparks. I love the pedal, but it’s currently the only drive in my modest chain; something that’s nice about a standard overdrive is that they’ve often already done the tone shaping for you. I’d like to see if I can produce a preset that’s somewhat close to a standard mid-focused OD pedal (Edit: I also like the “gentle drive” preset, which feels relatively transparent).
Right now I’ve got low cut at like 9:00, the filter transparent, and the dry blend around 9:00. I usually don’t push the gain past 12:00 if I’m in the “drive” range. “Fold” range is obviously a different story.
Absolutely love all the other bananas stuff this pedal does, but sort of funny to have it as my only drive in the chain.
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A classic OD is all about the EQ: low cut and upper-midrange emphasis before or after the drive.
I would reset Sparks to a transparent state by holding down LAYER. Then set it to:
- MODE: Low-pass mode
- CUTOFF: Somewhere between 2 and 3 o’clock should get you an upper-midrange cutoff. Adjust to taste.
- RESONANCE: Somewhere around 10 o’clock to get some upper-midrange emphasis. Adjust to taste.
- LOW CUT: This is key for synths and guitars. Set this somewhere between 9 o’clock and noon to roll out some low end before the drive. This gives overdriven polyphonic material like chords more clarity. Adjust to taste.
- DRIVE/FOLD: Leave at 100% drive.
- BLEND: Don’t blend in any dry signal. Most classic ODs don’t do this.
- GAIN: Adjust to taste.
- GATE / ENV / LFO / SPIN: Just leave these at zero.
Here are some EQ curves from classic drives that I analyzed while making Sparks. You can see the low cut or shelf around 100–500 Hz and the upper-midrange bump around 1–3 kHz. Use LOW CUT to roll out some low end and the filter resonance to bump the upper mids and you’ll be in the right territory.
If you’re using synths and getting too much drive with the GAIN setting set to zero, I encourage you to consider Line Level mode - this pads the input and gives lower gain settings.
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Wow, thanks for this super thorough response! I think I was on the right track with some of the stuff I was trying, but this is very useful. That OD response graph is also pretty interesting.
I’ve had a bad gear swapping problem the last year or so but I don’t think Sparks or Ribbons are ever leaving my board at this point. Seriously impressive stuff. That reverb on the ribbons is shockingly good for a two-knob reverb.
