Wildwood Small Box Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rising Farce
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Rising Farce

Rising Farce

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How well does the third channel take a front-end boost, if at all? I only ask because the "micro preamp" that adds gain to that channel sounds like it might be akin to a built-in clean boost, as opposed to the typical Friedman "Sat" feature. If so, I'd essentially be boosting a booster, which seems like a recipe for tonal messiness.
 
I owned the BE-100 first for a couple years before nabbing a Wildwood Smallbox. I relied on the third channel because I was so used to the saturated BE-100. Just this week I've been really dialing the Smallbox BE channel to sound great with a BOSS Waza SD-1 with no drive, just the level cranked, tone at 12 o'clock... Channel gain at 8.5.

The third channel really doesn't need anything in terms of gain/distortion unless you want to EQ it more or tighten it up, but it doesn't really need it. The third channel feels like a "Sat" BE channel to me, and it does muddy up quite easily if you have the gain up high.
 
Also, the "Sat" switch on the BE-100 acts like the 3rd channel on the WW Smallbox. The BE-100 sat switch will lower the volume vs. having the Sat switch off. Likewise, the 2nd channel on the Smallbox is louder than the 3rd saturated channel (when volume knobs are set at the same number).
 
Thanks for the info.

Can you get away with boosting channel 3 if you turn the (amp) gain down? If so, it would eliminate the tap-dancing that would otherwise be required to switch between a boosted channel 2 and an unboosted channel 3.
 
Rising Farce said:
Thanks for the info.

Can you get away with boosting channel 3 if you turn the (amp) gain down? If so, it would eliminate the tap-dancing that would otherwise be required to switch between a boosted channel 2 and an unboosted channel 3.
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You can totally do that... although the WW Smallbox footswitch has two buttons on it and I have, in a gig situation, hit the wrong buttons. It acts differently than the BE-100 footswitch.
 
Good to know. The amp should be here tomorrow, at which point I can give it a thorough workout. \m/
 
Got a Wildwood SB for a few years now - you can crank the gain on the 3rd channel and hit it with a boost and it sounds and feels amazing.
 
zuel69 said:
Got a Wildwood SB for a few years now - you can crank the gain on the 3rd channel and hit it with a boost and it sounds and feels amazing.
Click to expand...
I just did that (with a Mesa Grid Slammer), and it was killer. Total '80s metal machine.
 
Update, for anyone who cares: This amp absolutely destroys with a Legendary Tones Mr. Scary mod installed.

The only issue now is the disparity in gain between channels 2 and 3, and the inability to adjust the latter indepedently. Making the channel 3 boost feature defeatable via the front panel would be a worthwhile update.
 
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