Bogner Wessex (V1)
I ran across the Bogner Wessex pedal for the first time when I researched dirt (capable) pedals that are achieving breakup by means of driving a transformer into saturation. In my humble opinion, there is no middle ground when transformers are involved. The results are either great or abysmal. I remember being hyped about the JHS Colourbox because it’s transformer driven and then not liking it one bit.
I added the Wessex to my mental shortlist a long while ago, but somehow completely forgot about this – until I remembered when I ran across an ad for a second hand one for a good price. I immediately snagged it up. The internet is somewhat vague about the use of this pedal in combination with bass guitar – and I must admit that I have no idea about how Bogner currently fares in business, since at the time of writing this, their website is offline and it has been for some time.
What do we have here?
At first glance, the Wessex looks like a typical drive pedal. You got your typical controls with volume, gain, bass and treble and there is an additional switch that lets you switch between N and E. Those two letters mean Normal and Enhanced. The description of Enhanced describes what sounds like a typical bathtub EQ.
Looking on the lower right side of the pedal, we see a logo that is not Reinhold Bogner’s own, The name we read there is Rupert Neve. The transformer that more or less forms the center piece of this pedal was designed by the legend whose mixing desks were found in tone studios around the world – at least those who could afford them. Neve was a pioneer in solid state technology and built the first ever commercial mixing console that was transistor based instead of running on tubes. It featured the now legendary 1073 preamps/channel strips and was called the A88 Wessex. It seems Reinhold Bogner tipped his head towards Rupert Neve by choosing that name for his pedal.
One other special trick the Wessex does is hidden in the bezel over the LED. When you stomp the pedal into the ON position, the LED will light up red to indicate it’s ready. However, a blue LED will pulse with the strength of the signal post the gain knob, so it continuously indicates how hard you rock, like the Origin Effects Cali76 v1 compressors do. It certainly is no more than a flashy gimmick, but who does not like some pedalboard bling?
However, the bad news is we got side jacks in this pedal, for the 1/4″ and the 9V. The look of the thing is somewhat sleek, with brushed aluminum dominating and a purple face plate that matches the style, but could also be called boring. The enclosure is a custom job with a solid wall strength, it feels like a solid piece and it looks like it was machined from a block. The knobs have solid friction to them, there’s little chance of bumping them by accident and it really feels very high quality to handle.
Here’s a look at the center piece:
The transformer is a massive piece in the center. It certainly is a good bit larger than I would have suspected and the rest looks high quality to my eye. I don’t think Bogner has cut any corners here.
With that out of the way, the big question is, of course: How does the Bogner Wessex sound on bass guitar?
The manual is somewhat worthless as it only explains things in a very general way, skipping over the juicy details, so here is what I observed:
The “Pedalboard Bling” LED is actually triggered by the output of the pedal. When you set gain to max and level very low, then it won’t turn blue. You need to ride both gain and level pretty high to get a light show.
The EQ works a bit strange. The treble is easy, its a passive low pass, just like the tone knob on a passive bass.
The bass knob, however. I want to explain it like this: My ear tells me that there is a crossover, where everything above the crossover point gets fed into the clipping section while everything below the crossover point bypasses the clipping and stays clean. The bass knob sets the frequency of the crossover point. Run it high and the low notes growl, run it low and your bottom end stays clean.
Since the pedal passes sound with the Gain at zero, you can actually use it as a clean boost. With the gain at zero and the treble knob maxed, it sounds about identical to the dry signal. The position of the bass knob does not matter, since it does nothing when no breakup is happening.
The more efficient tone control thing is the little switch, which does what I assumed it would: It adds a bathtub EQ to the signal.
In my scenario, I do like it when a drive paddle is able to add some top end, so I did everything from here on with the treble knob wide open.
I must admit that my very first impression was somewhat of a bummer, because I had hoped for active tone controls and thought both treble and bass knobs were cut only passive blends. When I had figured out how the EQ works ( at least I think I do ) and played around a bit with the gain knob, I must correct my former impression.
IMHO, transformer breakup is somewhat of a hit or miss scenario with little grey between the black and white. The Wessex sounds great. You get a wide range dripping with saturation, a gooey and thick texture that reacts to your playing dynamics in a very musical way. There is no sweet spot you got to find and mark with a sharpie, you kind of feel how the pedal reacts and your playing adjusts accordingly, working in a larger range. This all feels very organic. There is no sharp precision with clearly defined edges and perfect 90° angles, but it simply feels right. After less than a minute of playing, I can anticipate the pedals reaction to my fingers so well that I can easily make it react it to my playing dynamics in the way I want it to. When I raise or lower the gain a bit, my fingers will compensate and I will still get the same sound. I have not encountered that kind of feeling often throughout my journey.
Exploring the gain knob’s travel all the way to the end, I’m pleased to hear how it manages to stay very organic for a long time before it pushes over to an artificial sound on the last few increments.
Sitting alone in my test lab, I greatly prefer to play the pedal with the switch in the Enhanced position.
This will add a fair bit more top end and also enhance the lowest lows. My gut tells me that this might not impact the pedal’s ability to sit in a mix too badly, but more on that later.
The stuff the Wessex adds to your playing when you run the gain around noon reminds me of an Italian Portafilter dripping coffee. One of those expensive ones that are all chrome, freshly cleaned and perfectly adjusted so it oooooooozes a thick crema into the waiting cup while the smells waft off into the room. That analogy works best if you are very much a coffee person and absolutely not a morning person 1 . It’s a bit too early to get up (for your taste) and you just came down into the kitchen where said machine is doing its thing, you see it, you smell it and you know you’ll taste it pretty soon. That’s how the added harmonics ooze out of the speakers, enveloping your notes with a thick and creamy goodness. It’s not overly bright, and it’s not overly dark either.
You can expect a sound that has a little bit more treble content than your clean sound through added harmonics as soon as the gain knob is going up far enough for them to appear, and of course some gentle boost from the switch in the Enhanced position. On top of that, the passive treble knob can easily take care of any unwanted harshness, just dial back a little bit and it mellows down.
There is no audible loss in the low frequencies. On top of that, by doing the not exactly intuitive thing of turning the Bass knob counter clockwise, the bass playing Wessex user can get some clean bottom end in the signal. This knob works well for balancing how the lower and the higher notes get distorted and of course you can also use it to create an intentional imbalance with your low notes staying clean, but the higher notes get some creamy crunch to them, something that might sit very well in a power trio.
However, you don’t really have to turn the pedal into solid overdrive territory to enjoy it. You get a clearly audible effect of transistor saturation from the low gain settings, those that won’t even qualify to be called a mild overdrive and it is great fun to play the pedal in those settings. I like to call those the magic tone sweeteners. Those pedals that give you something audible, yet hard to describe. You turn them on and you sound better. You turn them off and your tone looses a little life. You want to describe what it actually is that happened and you have to resort to the dreaded audiophile terms because normal vocabulary has been designed by people who did not anticipate the boutique pedal scene’s need for describing tone. There is a velvet mantle draped over the shoulders of your tone. For those that are not well versed with medieval clothing habits, let me elaborate: There were those things you wrap yourself in for protection against the weather and harsh life itself because you lived some 500 years before all the comfy stuff was invented. Those things were called cloaks. A mantle is something quite similar to a cloak, but it is mainly useless. A lot less protective against the outside world and a lot more showy. A mantle was worn as a display of status. A cloak was worn because you froze your balls off. The Bogner Wessex in those low gain settings provides something that does not really do much in terms of saving you from the cold. It trails behind and makes you look flashy, though. Your notes impact the same, but just after that initial hit, there is that saturation that comes from the Wessex, and like a mantle, it’s glorious. At least, when your tone is already so well off that it can travel by coach and only needs to walk very short distances through the cold of winter.
When you got everything in order, but you’re looking for that spark of a little something, your little secret special sauce that makes it more fun to listen to yourself playing – you can totally get a Wessex, set it with the gain rather low and go ahead and impress your tone hunting friends. “Where does that come from?” they will ask, watery eyed, trying to fight back the envy. “Only the saturation of a true Rupert Neve Transformer can give you that, my friends” is your smug answer.
The Bogner Wessex is not finished here, however. We still have about two thirds of the gain knob left.
As I was writing earlier, when we increase the gain and the heavy saturation turns into mild overdrive, there is a whole new playground to explore. We can go from very subtle to not so subtle and beyond in the area between 10 and 2 o’clock and the gooey spongy response to the touch really generates a very cultivated driven sound that is not a hard to describe and subtle je ne sais quoi in the background, but a rich and creamy sound that will bloom and blend double stops in a beautiful nature. It feels like a tone a dentist playing a vintage or custom shop Telecaster would enjoy a lot.
With the gain wider open, the pedal gets a certain bite, with the top end well represented, especially in the Enhanced mode. This works well in less crowded mixes and could be something you stomp on in a rock trio when the guitarist is playing leads or solos. I tried it in a metal setting and for that kind of crowded mix, it lacks density to hold its own. This is … well, it is what it is. The pedal does not punch, bite or shoulder its way through dense mixes. This pedal excels at low to mid gain overdrive and tone sweetening through ultra low gain drive / transformer saturation. It works so well with bass guitar that you might assume it was made for that application in the first place.
The touch response is great and that bass knob is something more people should copy.
If you’re looking for something transformer driven, this is one of the cheapest options, and by far not the worst you can end up with. I liked it more than the JHS Colourbox and also the Hudson Broadcast.
If you run across one on the cheap in the second hand market, go ahead and give it a try!
- People who consider themselves a tea or water person or a whatever beverage they enjoy person, who on top of that are early risers that swing out of bed in the morning, full of energy and vigor, ready to face the day and what it may bring! I politely want to ask you to either get into the mind space of a non-morning-coffee-person or to come up with your own analogy at this point. Sorry! ↩︎