Radial Bassbone OD: Two Basses, Two Tones, One Overdrive

The Radial Bassbone OD is a two-channel bass preamp, DI, and overdrive in one pedal, giving a bass player two fully independent input channels, each with its own level and EQ, feeding a shared effects loop and a built-in overdrive. It lets you plug in two instruments at once, dial a perfect tone for each, switch between them by footswitch, and send a balanced feed straight to the PA, all without touching your amp. For the working bassist who doubles on electric and upright or swaps between two basses in a set, it is the front end that makes those switches instant and seamless.

Why a Dedicated Bass Preamp Beats Leaning on the House DI

Plugging a bass straight into a stage DI works, but it leaves your tone entirely at the mercy of the room and the front-of-house engineer. A dedicated bass preamp puts the sound in your own hands: it sets the impedance the pickup wants to see, shapes the tone with EQ voiced for bass, and sends a clean, consistent balanced signal to the console every night. The Bassbone OD goes further by doing all of that for two instruments at once, so your carefully dialed sound follows you from soundcheck to stage and from venue to venue. You show up with your tone, not just your bass.

Dual Channels With Independent, Bass-Voiced EQ

The core of the Bassbone OD is two separate input channels, each with its own level control and a passive-interactive EQ tailored specifically for bass. Every channel includes a high-pass filter to roll off excessive low-end rumble and a selectable center frequency on the midrange band so you can boost or cut exactly where each instrument needs it. Because the two channels are fully independent, you can set a warm, round tone for a vintage passive bass on one and a modern, scooped voice for an active five-string on the other, then jump between them mid-song with the middle footswitch and never touch your amp.

Input A PZB and Input B Drag Control

The two inputs are not identical, and that is deliberate, because different basses want different things. Input A features a PZB (Piezo Booster) designed for the piezo transducers found in upright basses and acoustic bass guitars, giving those high-impedance pickups the load and gain they need to sound full instead of thin. Input B carries Radial's Drag Control, a variable load-correction circuit that adjusts the impedance a magnetic pickup sees so a passive electric bass responds with the natural tone and touch of plugging straight into an amp. Each input is optimized for the instrument most likely to be on it.

An Overdrive That Keeps Your Low End

Overdrive on bass usually comes with a painful trade-off: push the grit and the low end disappears, leaving a thin, buzzy sound with no foundation. The Bassbone OD solves this with an onboard overdrive, fed by the shared effects loop, that adds rich harmonic drive while preserving the fundamental weight of the note. You keep the punch and body of the bass underneath the dirt, so the overdrive sits as an added texture rather than a replacement for your tone. Reviewers have singled it out as better than many pedals dedicated solely to bass distortion.

Built-In DI, Headphone Out, Tuner, and Pickup Blend

Around the two channels sits everything a bassist needs to run a whole rig. A built-in Radial DI provides a low-impedance balanced XLR output to feed the PA, assignable pre or post effects, while a 1/4-inch output drives your stage amp. A headphone output allows silent practice, a tuner output with a mute footswitch lets you tune quietly on stage, and a blend switch combines a magnetic pickup and a piezo from a dual-element bass into one channel, effectively acting as a compact two-source mixer. The result is a single box that can anchor or even replace a bass front end entirely.

Who the Radial Bassbone OD Is For

The Bassbone OD is for the doubling bassist who moves between electric and upright and needs each optimized instantly; for the gigging player who switches between two basses and wants dialed-in tones without touching the amp; and for the bassist who craves overdrive that grits up the tone without gutting the low end. If you want your bass sound under your own control, DI-ready for the PA, and split perfectly across two instruments, the Bassbone OD is the preamp to put at the start of your chain.