top bass effects pedals Lusithand Ground & Pound Bass Distortion Pedal Mark II

DESCRIPTION - MKII (VERSION 2)

The Lusithand Ground and Pound distortion has rapidly become one of the brand's most highly sought-after pedals, and the reason is incredibly simple: it sounds massive. While the foundational architecture of this pedal is based on the legendary RAT circuit, Lusithand has taken the design in an entirely new, highly refined direction. They injected their own unique engineering flair to solve the biggest problem bassists face with most distortion pedals: the loss of low-end weight and midrange presence.

When Lusithand initially prototyped the Ground and Pound, their primary design goal was to capture Justin Chancellor’s famous, grinding overdriven tone. If you are familiar with his work, you know that his bass sound is defined by a massive, unyielding low-end foundation paired with a highly aggressive, metallic midrange that cuts through the mix. While this pedal will get you as close to JC’s tone as much as a pedal is capable of, it can do much more. It is an extremely flexible distortion with an unexpected amount of range.

You can easily dial the gain back to achieve a very subtle, warm amount of grit that simply adds harmonically complex saturation to your clean tone. Push the controls further, and it seamlessly opens up into a furious, full-blown distortion that retains incredible note clarity and string-to-string articulation.

The key component that makes the Ground and Pound work so flawlessly across so many different basses and stage rigs is its midrange presence which you can control through the EQZ and Ground/Pound switch. The EQZ is a perfectly tuned tilt EQ and the Ground/Pound switch gives you some added low-end extension, super useful if you’re playing an extended range bass or tuning lower than EADG.

If you are actively searching for a premium bass drive that is highly flexible, effortlessly retains your fundamental low-end, and guarantees that you will never disappear in the mix, you absolutely need to give the Lusithand Ground and Pound a listen. It is a highly musical distortion pedal built for the bassist who demands uncompromising stage authority.

From Lusithand:

The Ground & Pound MKII started with the idea of having a rat style dirt box 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. The distortion has been carefully tailored and equalised to have a full frequency spectrum, sounding full-bodied and cutthroat, and is very flexible due to its EQZ control, clean blend and wide gain range.

The controls, 6 in total, feature an “EQZ” tilt equalizer, 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. This 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 switch allows the player to select between a standard sound (pound) and a more modern, deeper sound (ground).

Finally, the L-pad attenuator switch allows for a -10db attenuation, perfect to use with hotter basses.

The Ground & Pound MKII is very versatile and 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.