Rodenberg LDP

 I’m gonna start off with a rant.
The first impression let me down a bit. Why? The build quality and enclosure. What’s there to complain? I’ll tell you.
The older Rodenberg effects I had in my hands were made from sheet metal – I’m guessing stainless steel. Think 3Leaf or Origin.
Something you could use as a door stopper, drop from a bridge on a busy highway for a cheap thrill, hide behind in a gunfight (advanced hiding skills required) and occasionally use as an effect pedal. When retiring from music many decades later, you could bring it to your town’s best blacksmith and have it forged into a sword to hang over the mantelpiece.
The LDP comes in a diecast aluminum enclosure which does not exactly look like a Hammond 1590 series model. A quick look inside confirms that it is an Eddystone 2690P/SL. Eddystone, however, was bought by Hammond in 1998.
The face plate is acrylic.
I have to admit that I would not enjoy a gunfight behind this particular pedal.
This particular topic, of course, could be ushered in the realms of philosophy and be phrased “How good is good enough? Modern guitar pedals and armor piercing ammunition”.

I’m quite sure the Hammond and therefore Eddystone enclosures will do more than fine for many decades, as long as you use the thing for the intended purpose and steer clear of highway bridges and gunfights.
But I cannot help it, seeing how someone went the extra mile and put their pedals in a special total-overkill enclosures and then downgrading to the industry standard is somewhat of a downer.

However, what remained unchanged is the feeling of solid quality when you look at or touch everything else. The knobs feel ultra solid, there is no play anywhere and they need a good amount of force to turn. The switches feel great, as do the foot switches. The power input is mounted on the PCB. I don’t know why, but I prefer it mounted to the case, but that’s just me.

Even though Rodenberg dropped out of the elite league, they remain at the very top of the …. elite 2 league(?).

The two LEDs on the pedal are blue and green, mounted behind some jewel-style bezels. Those LEDs are BRIGHT. You’ll have no trouble seeing the status of the pedal in bright sunlight. In a somewhat dim rehearsal room, the lights can actually be seen on the ceiling. That is a bit much if you ask me. I’d experiment with removing the bezels and darkening the underside with a sharpie.

With that out of the way, let’s see what we got here. It’s an overdrive and a clean boost. Two separate effects in a single housing. The order is fixed, the signal hits the overdrive first and the boost after that.
I would have wished for an option to reverse that, so you could get low gain and high gain sounds from one pedal, but Rodenberg obviously has a different vision for how this pedal should be used.

The manual and internet are not exactly rich in detail when it comes to the inner workings of the pedal.

What do we have here?
Short version: I will eat my strap if the LDP is not directly derived from the Tube Screamer circuit.

Long version: This shows lots of similarities to the Tube Screamer design, but those characteristics that disqualify the Tube Screamer for bass use have been eradicated. We get the three knob layout, where Level controls the ouptut, Drive controls the amount of drive and is not a straight up gain knob as it is in the Tube Screamer – passing signal at fully CCW and giving you that non-linear feeling when turning it up. Tone is an active treble control, capable of boost and cut. Beyond that, there are two switches. One will give you +20dB of extra gain should you want it. Testing with my passive bass that has a rather weak output, I never felt the need to touch that switch. There was plenty of dirt on tap and with the drive set to 11, I felt like that’s more than enough, but it’s there should you feel adventurous. The other switch is named ‘Deep’ and it does exactly that. Your signal gains very low frequencies. The low rumble that makes the stage boards shake and massages your feet. Deep switch on or off, there is no loss of low end.
As I wrote in the Tube Screamer Mini text, that pedal was designed to sit between what it feels like playing an amp and what it feels like playing an overdrive pedal. The Rodenberg LDP gives you the same feeling. It’s not pushing nor pulling. The dynamics are there, but they feel a bit unique. The only other pedal that comes to mind is the Blackstone Appliances drive pedal, that also just hangs there and goes with the flow instead of bringing a mind of its own into the dynamics.
Let me clarify: IMHO, an amp like pedal will give you the feeling that when you push it, it pushes back. It essentially wants to stay clean and when you use playing dynamics to get more drive, the notes will clear up on decay and if it’s done right, your fingers will feel like they are fighting an uphill battle, but in a good way. An overdrive pedal on the other hand will feel like it’s egging you on. It’s sole purpose is to bring dirt into the game and it wants to, so your fingers are playing downhill.
The Rodenberg LDP sits on a flat surface and agrees to whatever the general consensus of the moment is. The drive I’m getting is smooth and natural. I can boost the treble to get some note definition and a bit of bite, which is a good thing in my book.
It’s easy to set it to a very mild and smooth dirt that hugs the note from behind but leaves the initial impact intact when playing softly and getting more dirt when digging in. Especially double stops get a nice texture to them in that setting, and fills that go up the fretboard sing with a lovely voice.
If you are confronted with a dense mix, playing with two distorted guitars, the sizzle of the LDP mostly disappears, unless you ride both the drive and tone knob very high, which lets the bite of the signal shine through, not unlike the way the Darkglass pedals employ those frequencies to be audible in a metal setting. This needs some careful balancing, because when you dial in too much bite, you get the feeling that the low end lacks a bit in the mix.
It works much better with a three piece where the bass can supply a nice grovel-like grind when the guitar does lead or solo parts, where you can dial in a not so harsh setting. It does not really shine through as long as the guitar is playing rhythm with you, but once guitar and bass separate, there is a nice organic grind and sizzle to fill up the empty space.

I had a hard time finding a use for the clean boost. In all my setups, I run compression late in the chain and boosting the signal only makes the comp clamp down harder. From what I tried, it is a nice boost, with tonal options to add a bit of treble and sparkle, as well as the deep switch that gets you those rumbling lows. Maybe it could be useful when you play with a darker tone but want some low and top end for slap parts, or if you play finger style and want to emulate some pick attack, but I must admit that I mostly ignored the boost side of things and strictly focused on the drive side of things.
With the level on the boost side set to unity, you can still make use of it if you dial in a mellow tone on the drive side and use the boost side’s tone control to add the bite – leaving you with two different drive tones.