Wounded Paw Audio Siege Engine II Bass Overdrive

For over a decade now, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a great company to the north, Wounded Paw Audio, coming to you from the woods of Ontario, Canada. Although it’s been a couple of years since our last pedal from them (the awesome Hellhound Distortion), today’s beastly unit more than makes up for the wait. The Siege Engine II Bass Overdrive gives you more control over your low end dirt than I’ve ever seen, really letting you twist and turn to create the sound you’ve been searching for…

The Siege Engine II is a powerful bass weapon that features a 5-band EQ and overdrive section that allows you to carefully tailor the gain and tone at different frequencies.

• Pre Gain: The high impedance jfet input amp feeds directly into a Pre Gain control that can push the overdrive section harder or lighter as desired. It’s a quick way to alter the overall aggression and when pushed hard can introduce some harmonics on its own.
• Overdrive: In the overdrive section the signal is split into Bass, Lo Mid, Mid, Hi Mid and Treble frequency bands. Each band has a Level control and it’s own Drive control. All the bands are summed back together to form a harmonically rich tone that still maintains the integrity of all the notes you’re playing.
• Footswitches: There is one footswitch for the True Bypass and another to switch the Overdrive section on or off.

Overdrive Section

Engage the entire Overdrive section with the Overdrive stomp switch. In the overdrive section the instrument signal is split into Bass, Lo Mid, Mid, Hi Mid and Treble frequency bands.

• Bass, Lo Mid, Mid, Hi Mid and Treble: Sets the output level of each of these frequency bands. These frequency bands also have individual Drive controls which sets how much overdrive is applied to that particular frequency range.
• Volume: All the bands are then summed back together to form a harmonically rich tone that still maintains the integrity of all the notes you’re playing with the Overdrive’s output level being set by the Volume control.
• Hi Cut: The Hi Cut control works on the summed overdrive signal to tame the possibly huge amounts of higher harmonics generated by mixing all the overdrives together.
• Master: The Master volume sets the output level of the pedal whether the Overdrive is on or not.

In the demo I did, I go through all of the controls, dial in some fun sounds, and , of course, throw in some other effects pedals, because why not? The Siege Engine II Bass Overdrive really pushed my little Ampeg Micro-VR, in the best of ways, bringing out tones and nuances I hadn’t heard before. And when you get those Drive knobs cranked up a bit, something special really starts to happen. Thanks so much to Preston and Wounded Paw Audio for their continued support, and for including me in another sonic adventure…be sure to check out their website for more info on this creative effect, and their entire lineup of great gear!!