Cornerstone Music Gear Gladio

The Cornerstone Gladio is geared towards guitar, but totally works on bass. The funny bit is that it comes with *gasp* a clean blend! Unheard of in the guitar playing population, do we have something of a standard feature for us bass loving folk.

When the Gladio arrived, I quickly opened it up and set the internal Bass knob to about 3/4 up, because I knew I had to grab my things and head straight out when work’s over.
I got out of the shop a bit later than I thought, and traffic was bad, so I came ten minutes late to band practice instead of early, as I had wanted.
So I set up my pedalboard, plugged the Gladio in and quickly tried to set a sound, then used it in band context without trying it first.

Something entirely different to a normal first impression. Not me, alone in my room, gathering my thoughts and then trying it out with headphones, bass amp and mock PA setup as I usually do.
The very first thing I heard was that the grain was finer than most other overdrive pedals, like I think I read online before.
The edges were sharp’ish, but I was reminded of pebbles on a beach, mostly rounded off by the sea, but not so much that walking barefoot is a satisfying and painless experience.
The next thing I found was that this pedal is a feedback hog. I could coax all manner of feedback from it with minimal effort – I could even get it to squeal just by switching it on, with the volume on my P bass turned down completely – or with the volume up, but both hands muting the strings.
I got that to an extend that the others got a little annoyed. The lead guitarist had killed his Marshall head (three decades without service saw to it that one of the tubes died and it became unreliable) and brought his Diezel, which has a meaner sound with more gain, and more feedback. The rhythm guitarist had similar problems with his amp for some unknown reason. Only the singer had no issues with the PA, even though he usually has them – so it might have been opposite day when it comes to feedback, or there have been some freak electrons diffusing around the room, I don’t know.
I did give up after a few tracks and left it off for the rest of the evening.

In my home testing environment I discovered the following:
-The clean blend feels a bit like it’s not really doing much. Turning it from 0-10 and back did not impact the sound in a meaningful way.
-The Comp switch feels like a bass cut. In the upper position, the sound gets thinner.
-The tone control is maybe not really geared towards basses with flats, because I could not get it to do overly much either.

Apart from that it is a touch sensitive drive pedal capable of low and mid gain overdrive sounds that have a very fine texture to them, finer than most other pedals.
However, my feeling was that this is a guitar pedal and not all guitar pedals that do not cut bass are good bass pedals. I don’t really know where to locate the disconnection I feel when playing it, but it just feels a bit like while it is doing what I tell it to do, it’s not really enjoying itself doing so.
Or maybe it’s just me not enjoying myself when playing through the Gladio.

No problem or harm done – these are easy to sell!