If you’ve followed Two-Rock or been interested in their amps for a while, you’ll know that many of their amps are Dumble inspired. The Bloomfield Drive is no exception, taking inspiration from their ODS-style TS-1 and adding a lush reverb. In theory this should be the best of both worlds, but owners have been finding that they can’t quite get the ODS tones they’re looking for from it. So is some magic sauce missing, or is it user error?
Goals
I have owned a Bloomfield Drive combo now for more than a year and it has been exactly what I originally wanted. An amp that can do beautiful cleans similar to a Classic Reverb but with a drive channel that lets me get some breakup at reasonable volume levels. Setting the drive channel just on the edge of breakup gave me two “clean” channels that I could stack pedals in front of.
However lately I’ve gone back an watched Joey Landreth’s demo again, as well as checking out some videos of other actual Dumble amplifiers. I found myself wondering if I could get the ODS tones from my Bloomfield Drive. Turning up the gain on the drive channel didn’t really get me where I wanted, and remembering the Josh Smith video of the TS-1 reminded me to turn up the gain on the clean stage first as it cascades into the drive channel to push it further.
Revelation
Well turning the “clean” gain up to 3 o’clock didn’t really get me there either, leaving me a bit cold and bewildered as to how Joey got those sweet tones. Was it due to some really pokey P90s? Maybe my combo is set to lower gain levels, or I needed to roll some tubes. Well the answer was none of the above, and once again came from thinking back to a Matt Schofield video from when he was on “That Pedal Show” explaining how he sets his amps, pedals, etc.
He describes listening to the pots as you turn them and to listen for the point where the have the most impact. When doing this you usually find a couple points on the rotation of the pots (short for potentiometers or “knobs” for the non-technical) where they have a lot more impact. Doing this on the first gain knob through the whole range I found two interesting spots I didn’t notice before. They are at around 4 o’clock and 5 o’clock, or on a 1-10 scale they’d be about 8 and 9. At these two points the gain jumps up by a lot, giving those sweet overdrive tones I had been looking for.
One bonus tip if you’re looking to really up the gain on the Bloomfield Drive, the mid boost switch gives a good boost to the gain that can push it over the edge. This is especially good with certain guitars such as a Strat that is naturally more lacking in the minds.
