Wampler Belle

The Belle is Wampler’s take on the Nobels ODR-1. It comes with four knobs instead of three, having an additional bass knob. From what my ears tell me, I would assume that the Bass knob is neutral at 12, will cut and boost lows, and is placed in front of the clipping bits. The contour knob felt like it will gravitate towards the mids on the left side while providing a generous helping of high frequencies to the right side. The Nobels graph shows that it’s more of a mid scooped sound with raised bass and treble.
When you play the Belle alone, it is more prone to show signs of breakup, but the signal clears up well with playing dynamics. Set like that and playing the Belle into the Sushi Box Underground Accelerator, the harder push sends the tube over the edge and both pedals seem to spur each other on, the sparkle of the Belle being mixed and complimented by the sparkle the UA has to add. The tone is THICC and heavy. Heaps of mighty rumble in the lows and a searing quality to the harmonics that makes you think of a well oiled chainsaw AND pushing your hand into a well oiled frying pan at the same time. I tried a bit to play with the levels and thought that the UA yields a livelier response when I raise the output levels of the Belle.

Back to the Belle.
This thing does not shy from any lows. The highs can offer a surprising amount of that certain biting sound one would associate with Darkglass products and Stingray basses – but to get that I needed to play a bass with a fresh set of strings (with the metal zing sound still intact). The same settings with the flats that have been on my main bass for over two years now (and have long since not only reached zero zing, but crossed over to sub zing. These wires suck so much dirt out of the signal, I should keep an eye out for suspicious vacuum cleaner R&D people around my bass, trying to learn its secrets) do not yield even the slightest hint of Darkglass, nor Stingray.
As advertised, the pedal reacts well to playing dynamics and the drive knob spreads the sweet spot wide. You can’t simply set it on the edge of breakup. There is no small tipping point. The slope is so wide, you have to decide where exactly on the edge you wanna sit.
You can go for mostly clean with just the peaks of your playing reaching breakup, or you can set it to add just bit of hair to your normal playing, adding thickness and warmth rather than sizzle, and let the sizzle come when you dig in, or you can go beyond that – but in my case not very far, because the drive knob is dimed now.
Double checking with my active 5 string dual humbucker bass tells me that normal people will have a solid wall of drive now. It is that raw area where an Overdrive has to decide whether to become a distortion or a fuzz.
This one would cross in fuzz territory if pushed even further – but the knob is dimed now.

I kept the contour knob at the right side of the dial for the most time because those tones appealed to me.
It felt like the pedal adds definition to what’s there in my limited upper frequency range, instead of filling that void by adding harmonics. Too much sounded a bit harsh and artificial, but a good bit of that EQ boost in the upper registers gave the notes clear borders and sharper edges.

I do like how this pedal does try to be the opposite of the tube screamer in those particular settings.
Instead of compressing the tone towards the mid band, the Belle shies away from those center frequencies and focuses more on both low and high end. You can actually set it so your lowest notes have grind and your highest notes have bloom, but the middle of the fretboard just has a thickness that does not feel driven.

It is a great low gain overdrive pedal. It’s tiny, it is not expensive, it’s very easy to set. This should be recommended a lot more than it is. I instantly liked it a lot better than many of the drives I played in the past.
It is kind of sober sounding, meaning that it does not add intricacies, and there is no shimmer or glitter on top, going for more of a down-to-business approach.