We'll be straight with you: most bass preamp pedals either don't do enough or try to do so much that you spend more time programming them than playing. The EarthQuaker Devices Scrolls Bass Odyssey isn't that. It was built with Japanese bassist Kentaro Nakao with one real goal — get every useful bass tone into one box and make it fast to use on a gig.
It's got a Drive channel that sounds genuinely good. Not clipped, not fizzy — the kind of warmth you'd expect from a tube amp working the way it's supposed to. There's also an active EQ side with three push-button switches so you can dial in your tones before soundcheck and switch between them without thinking about it. That's the kind of feature that sounds small until you're on stage and it saves you.
The effects loop placement is worth calling out specifically. It sits between the Drive and EQ channels, not at the end of the chain. That matters because your modulation or reverb gets processed before the EQ shapes it — you keep full tone control over whatever you run through it. Most bass preamps don't bother thinking that far ahead.
Three outputs run simultaneously: standard ¼", a buffered parallel out, and a balanced XLR for going direct. If you do fly dates or run to both an amp and the board, you know exactly why that matters.
Drive side uses Flexi-Switch® so you can latch or momentarily engage it. EQ side is relay-based true bypass. EarthQuaker builds their stuff to last, and the Scrolls is no different.
This is the one we'd tell a gigging bassist to look at if they want to stop carrying four pedals to do the job one should.
Preorder now at ChuckLevins.com!
