The Vintage Ultra is the result of the finest engineering process we have ever accomplished. 40 years ago it was necessary to carry a massive amp to have a rich, tight and articulate sound for bass players. Today, all you need is a super portable preamp which enables on one side a massive clean sound, and from the other side, a tasty saturated sound. This is a true elixir for low end lovers. The Vintage Ultra is laid out exactly like the B7K Ultra, and if you check the specs on the Darkglass website, they seem almost identical from a feature and control perspective. In total there are eight knobs, four 3-way toggle switches, two footswitches and two LEDs to play around with.

On the back you will find input and output jack connectors plus the power supply input. On the left side, there is a DI Out on an XLR connector and on the right side a push knob allows you to activate the GROUND LIFT function.

The four lower knobs make up the EQ part of the pedal: BASS (100 Hz center frequency), LO MIDS, HI MIDS and TREBLE (5 kHz). For each of the mid bands, you also get a toggle switch for choosing between 3 target frequencies. LO MIDS choices: 250 Hz / 500 Hz / 1 kHz, and for the HI MIDS: 750 Hz / 1.5 kHz / 3 kHz. All EQ bands can be boosted or cut by 12 dB.

The top knobs mainly control the overdrive section. First of all, of course, the DRIVE knob that sets the amount of dirt you want to apply, supported by the LEVEL and BLEND knobs. Finally, a MASTER knob lets you set the overall output level, perfect for dialing in unity gain.

The two other toggle switches belong to the drive section. The ATTACK switch deals with the high frequencies of the drive signal. Setting are either FLAT, BOOST or CUT. And the GRUNT switch handles the bass side of your overdrive tone in much the same way.

The two foot switches, BYPASS and DISTORTION, work independently, but logically the BYPASS footswitch takes out both the clean preamp / EQ as well as the drive circuit, whereas the DISTORTION foot switch can add drive to whatever fundamental tone you have created with the EQ side of the pedal.