The DSM Dumblifier Pedal in all it's Gory Glory

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]All right, guys. How's it going? Uh we've got some some fun or a fun new toy to play with today from our dear friend Surrender. Uh this is the Dumblifier by DSM Humbolt, our favorite Chilean effects builders. Um those guys have been making in particular a pedal called the Simplifier forever. Pretty pretty early on in the whole Amplus uh direct thing. Uh, what kind of sets that unit and this one apart is that they are all analog. They're small. They're pedal pedal board sized. Um, and not really a digital thing. It's an analog thing. Um, so obviously in a world where we got Helix stadiums and quad cortexes and ax effects and tonex and all those things, this is a little different route to go if you need to go without an amp. Like so you got a silent stage or you need a fly rig or you need something at home that you can play with headphones or you want to be able to just plug right into your computer until it's all and record.

[00:01:37]uh and you don't maybe like lots of menus or screens or touch screens or any of that stuff or computers and you're used to just knobs and buttons and switches and stuff you can see and feel, this might be the thing for you. So, obviously the idea of this unit is the preamp. Uh you could use it just like an amp, treat it like an amp, put it at the end of your pedal board, run pedals into it. Um it's got all the cab stuff. It's really all you need like an amp. It's just in a little pedal size sort of direct box size format. Um, and it actually feels and sounds great. We're going to talk through it because I think it's really cool. Um, it is obviously a much cheaper alternative uh to owning an actual Dumble. Um, but yeah, let's let's talk through it. It it's it's got a lot on there, a lot of knobs. I don't know if we'll get through everything, but I'll give you the gist of it and hopefully you get an idea. uh since since our our PAL surrender was was cool enough to send it our way. You get an idea uh if this is something you dig or not. Um I haven't spent a lot of time with it. I've just plugged it in, played it a little bit. Um but we're learning together. So don't, you know, don't roast me in the comments if I get something wrong, but I'm going to let you hear it. We're just going direct in to our interface right here. I've got a little uh powered speaker on the floor that I'm hearing it through the room. It sounds really good that that way, by the way. So, if you were going to do something like that, like run it through a little powered speaker or like an F frfr kind of cab thing at home, pretty awesome option. Um, lots of Before we even get started with the the sounds, lots of output options on this thing.

[00:03:19]You got a left and a right uh XLR or you can go like a quarter inch. Um, the quarter inch ones have you can turn the cab on and off. It's always on on the XLR outs if I'm not mistaken. Um, left and right has different sort of uh, you know, cab and speaker combinations for both. So, you could go like a stereo thing where maybe you do like a 112 uh, with with um, the EV speakers and maybe you do like a 412 with with Celestians or vice versa. Lots of different options. So, anyways, that's the deal with the the outputs instrument in. you got some boost options going right away.

[00:03:59]It does seem to me like there's not a ton of um signal if you don't use some of the boost. So, there there's a couple different boost things, but right here where you plug in, there's a no boost, a low, and a high input boost. And right now, what you're hearing, I'm running the low input boost. So, just to give it just to make it sort of have have enough signal. Um, so if we go through the way this thing is laid out, man, on the top you got clean and overdrive volumes. Uh, and so on the overdrive, you sort of basically have like a like a gain, a drive, and a ratio. So like sort of like a drive and a volume control. The clean side, it is two channels. You can toggle between clean and overdrive. So you got a volume for your clean channel. Um, over here on the power amp section, you've got presence control, which is really helpful for how much sort of like that that sort of sizzly, sparkly top end that you want and overall master volume, which is which is really cool.

[00:04:58]Uh, the next little section right here you can see is where you kind of pick your cabs and your speakers. Uh, and then underneath that, you got bass, mid, and treble. And then beside that, uh, right right to the right of that, you'll see on the pedal when JP puts it up there, you've got a bright switch.

[00:05:14]You've got a mid boost that you can turn on or off. And then you've got like like a lot of the Dumble stuff, the rock and the jazz setting. Now, this thing also has uh it's got um reverb. So, three different types of reverb. There's plate, there's what I believe they call ethereal, ether, and then there's room. I've got it on a plate reverb right now, and I've got that like sort of half the way up.

[00:05:39]And you can hear if I turn my guitar up, you can hear a fair amount of reverb. Um, we'll get to that in a second, too. But first switch just turns the thing on and off.

[00:05:52]There's the guitar straight into the speaker. Not a very uh wonderful sound.

[00:05:58]Um, I don't even know if you can you should be should be recording that. I think the signal still passes through.

[00:06:02]There's the amp back.

[00:06:05]And then the second one toggles you between that clean O.

[00:06:15]Now, so right now I've got pretty much all the EQ set at noon. Uh almost exactly at noon. I've got the bright switch on. I'm going to turn that off. I got the mid boost off. And I'm on the jazz setting for a little little jazzy chords. Um, here's the clean channel that way. I know it's not really for jazzy chords, just the setting, but there's a clean sound.

[00:07:28]bridge pickup with So that that's a lot of fun. Even just with like I said, even with all the EQ stuff just at noon, that sounds really good. Here's that with that mid boost.

[00:08:07]So that, you know, that that's that's actually sounds really nice and warm, but I think that would still cut, you know, in in in the right scenario, even clean. So that's that's a lot of fun.

[00:08:21]Uh, let's turn that mid boost back off and let's hear the bright switch.

[00:08:28]Bright switch on the neck.

[00:08:47]So, you know, lots lots of good sort of compression, lots of good sustain even on the clean side of things. Here we'll switch it. I'm going to turn the bright back off. I'm going to turn from the jazz to the rock setting.

[00:09:08]Here's the bridge pickup with that.

[00:09:29]So, all that sounds really, really good.

[00:09:31]I'm going to put all those back down.

[00:09:33]And now I've got the drive not quite to noon. Let's switch over to the OD channel.

[00:10:24]That to me that sounds really good. That was the middle pickup position. And here's the bridge.

[00:10:54]Also really cool sounding the neck and and I really I haven't touched the EQ or the speakers. So this just gives you an idea, you know, some of the sounds you can get. Um, let's do let's do the mid boost with the OD channel because I I dig the way that sounds.

[00:11:27]Here it is on that uh bridge pickup again.

[00:11:54]Mid boost on the neck pickup.

[00:12:06]Here's the bright switch.

[00:12:13]Here's the rock sound. The rock setting.

[00:12:44]So, all that stuff sounds really good.

[00:12:46]I'm going to go back to all those off.

[00:12:48]So, we'll leave it on jazz. We'll leave it on uh uh you know, mid boost off, bright boost off. Now, let's just hear the reverb settings. So, like I said, that was the plate. I'm gonna actually put it back to clean.

[00:13:05]There's plate.

[00:13:34]Let's go over to room. So, here's room turned up pretty pretty substantially like almost uh 3:00.

[00:13:44]You can hear hear that.

[00:14:02]So, nothing nothing crazy, but a really pleasant sounding reverb. I think I really like the plate so far, but just just so you can hear it. Here's the the sort of ethereal one in between.

[00:14:39]So, even if you wanted to play this thing with no pedals, with nothing else, you get some really nice reverbs. You got a clean channel, you got a dirty channel, you got all sorts of output options. You got different cab options.

[00:14:50]Again, it sounds good in headphones. You can turn the sort of cab stuff on and off. But that just gives you an idea of what this thing sounds like. I think it sounds really, really, really good. And I love that it's simple. I'm not really like a menu diver or, you know, I don't like to sit and spend hours on the computer doing presets. I have friends that do that and they're amazing at it.

[00:15:09]I've done it. I do it sometimes out of necessity, but for just being able to plug in and getting a great amp sound, man, this is a really, really good option. We don't sell these things, so we can't sell you one. But if you're interested, um I think you just go maybe to their website, but uh a a quick Google search of Dumblifier by DSM Humbolt and you'll you'll find one. Uh, but if you're looking for an ample solution that's really, really simple and sort of foolproof, I think it sounds really, really good.

[00:15:42]Um, like I said, we're just sort of scratching the surface and giving you an idea. Uh, hopefully you enjoyed it.

[00:15:47]Hopefully you like things like this.

[00:15:49]It's always fun to sort of put stuff out there when we find neat things that our customers and our friends are are buying um that we don't have in the shop. So, it's fun to put those out. Um, so let you know, let us know if you like these things. Let us know if there's more things like this you want us to do little demos on. Um, make sure you click like and that you are subscribed and that you hit the bell so you don't miss videos in the future. Thanks so much for hanging out with me. I'll see you next time.