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A year and a half ago I visited Darkglass Electronics in their workshop in Helsinki and wrote a post about it. Yesterday it was time for another visit. Doug and the Darkglass team has produced so much new cool stuff that I couldn't wait any longer. (You have figured out already I am really interested in the new Darkglass 700, right? Disclaimer: I am a Darkglass fan.) Doug kindly let me and my friend Loïc, come and visit their new offices in central Helsinki and we spent half the day with them.
Video interview with Doug Castro, Darkglass Electronics, February 2016. The interview contains things which are only touched on below, or not even talked about at all. So you better watch it.
Since we saw Doug the last time Darkglass has released a ton of new stuff. They have refreshed the products with new milled aluminium unibody casings. If you haven't seem them, they are really nice. Most pedals have also have had minor improvements. The Super Symmetry compressor pedal, which he told us about last time, has been released and been very well received. The on-board preamp, Tone Capsule, can be found in Dingwall basses. The Vintage Deluxe is out. And finally, the much sought after two foot-switch B7K Ultra has just started shipping (a huge batch left the day before we were there). Doug showed us circuit board designs for it when we were there last time, but of course, I couldn't talk about it then.
Darkglass Vintage Deluxe pedals ready for packaging.
The new Darkglass offices are nice and airy, and there is a persistent sound of baselines being played as each pedal is extensively tested. More space for storage of components means better ability to do logistics. All pedals are assembled, tested, packed and shipped from the Helsinki workshop. The cases are milled locally and the laser etching on the pedals are also done in Finland. A nice new touch on the newer pedals are that the serial number is etched into the backplate on the outside.
The team is quite a lot bigger since we visited last time. Which has allowed more work to go into better logistics, analysing issues with production and making sure what goes out the door holds consistently high quality. Of course, occasionally a pedal goes out the door which needs attention. But if you have spent any time in the TalkBass forums you know Doug and his team are paying close attention to issues and help out quickly when something goes wrong.
Pedal assembly.
Darkglass 700 – One of the things that really excited me before NAMM this year, the US music gear show, was that the rumours flew high and low that Darkglass would release an amplifier. I knew an amplifier was coming, but not if it would be ready for NAMM. In the end it wasn't ready for shipping, but they demonstrated prototypes of the new Darkglass 700 amp and everything I read about it was that it was good. There were a bunch of relatively poor video clips from the show. And I can tell you, those clips do not do the amp justice. Not at all.
Darkglass 700 amplifier. Darkglass 410 speaker cabinet.
I had the privilege to test play the amp in Doug's office, whilst Doug was going through the settings as I played, explaining what he was trying to achieve with it. And damn, if that isn't going to be a real best seller, I'll be really surprised. I don't really have anything new to tell, but for those of you that have missed it the amp will deliver 700 watts at 4 ohms, 1000 watts at 2.7 ohms. It will have the B3K and Vintage Microtubes effects built in. It is built as an all aluminium body with no fan and the whole body acts as a heatsink. Doug was showing me how it behaves thermally with an infrared camera.
I tested it with a Tone Capsule equipped bass, but heard it with a few other basses as well. Just going straight the amp has a very DI like clean tone. What you hear is what your bass delivers. Anyone who is interested in studio clean, punchy tone really should have a look at this beast. I think you will be surprised. When you apply the effects, you get what you expect, the signature Darkglass sound with an amazing amount of brawn to it. (Explaining tone with words is like dancing the colours of the rainbow, but heck we try.) The amp can be brutal, clean and anything in between, where the Vintage sounds allows a "modern old-school sound" and the B3K sound gives you that metal bass you don't get anywhere else. Your going to love it, or hate it. I don't think you can be indifferent to it.
PCBs ready to be assembled into pedals.
Doug has a few more tweaks to make to the amp, before it is ready and there will probably be one more round of prototypes before the production models are built. I think most people will be happy with the relatively small changes, but I am not going to say anything about now. As it as I think it is best if Doug has the space he needs to get it done right, without me setting expectations about things that may change a month from now. With a bit of luck, a friend, who is a bassist, a huge tech nerd and a technical editor for a hi-fi magazine will get to test one of the next round of prototypes and we will write a comprehensive review.
Doug picking some basses to do some testing with
Darkglass speaker cabinets – I think something which took everyone by surprise was the fact that Darkglass showed speaker cabinets alongside the amplifier. They showed 2x10 and 4x10 cabinets, at 4 ohms each. The speakers are custom made ceramic from Eminence. The cabinet comes with a tweeter and an adjustable crossover. Most tweeters don't sound particularly great with the distortion form Darkglass pedals, so the crossover has been designed specifically to work well with the Darkglass distortion frequencies. And I can say it works. I only had a chance to play the amplifier with the 4x10 cabinet and it is of course hard to tell what it will sound like with a different cabinet, but clearly it was good with this. The 4x10 was punchy, deep and had the power which could be felt. But of course, we were in an office where nobody minds loud bass, but not a sound proofed practice space. Doug mentioned that he was hoping to ship them in both 4 ohm and 8 ohm configurations, so you could get a two times 4x10 stack, or easier to transport two times 2x10 if you wanted. Although I think 2x10 or 4x10 will be plenty for most situations.
A peak into the creators workshop. This is where days and weeks of trying, failing, and trying again, turns into sound magic. My friend Loïc and Doug.
New signature pedal: Jon Stockman, Karnivool – To those that follow the Darkglass pedal thread on TalkBass, it will come as no surprise that Doug is working with Jon Stockman on a new pedal. I was a bit naively thinking that I had heard what I needed from Darkglass when it comes to distortion pedals and I have a B7K and a VMT. After all, the BXK/VMT/Duality fuzz are no slouches in this space. So when I heard that a signature pedal was coming, I arrogantly thought I wouldn't need it as I have a B7K and VMT. Boy was I wrong! The new pedal is something different, again. From clean to brutal bass … soundscapes? I am sure I haven't heard anything like it before. (But then I haven't listened to Karnivool before.) If you like distorted bass, there is going to be some real goodies in there, quite a few actually. The prototype pedal was amazingly versatile. More so than both the B7K and VMT I think. The only consoling factor is that if I get a 700, I suppose I could sell either the VMT or the B7K, as both will be in the amp, so I can get a Stockman pedal too.
Of course, Darkglass wouldn't be Darkglass if there wasn't more in the works. Some really rather exciting things actually. But, we'll leave that to the next visit I think. Thanks to Doug and the whole Darkglass team for all the cool creations and the hospitality.
Secret project being unpacked. Even unfinished this sounded amazing.
