The whole thing engenders confidence; this sucker definitely won’t be stage-creeping or falling victim to some singer’s careless flailing. Like round white stones on a Go board, three rubber-covered footswitches line up along the Utopia’s front edge, clearly labeled in high-contrast white, as are the back-panel jacks. I especially liked the dedicated center-switch mute button, which also confirms a chosen patch if you opt for the Utopia’s browse-first patch-loading protocol. On the other hand—or should I say foot—the ball of my shoe sole sometimes bent down on the unit’s raised front edge, causing my toe to cantilever upward and miss the button I intended to mash.
In contrast to the Utopia’s stark hardware, its software seems less about Zen simplicity and more about Deuteronomical depth. You can really get in there and tweak everything—and I mean everything—from full EQ and compression parameters, to chorus depths, delay rates, signal-chain order, and so on. It all happens courtesy of the highly readable LCD and three editing knobs. For example, the expression pedal can control absolutely whatever, from stereo flange panning to the Variac simulation, which adjusts the virtual voltage level at which the preamp begins to distort. Dive in, but bring a full oxygen tank, as the B100 is deep but often obscure; I sometimes felt I needed a manual for the manual. There’s no tuner—something I’d certainly expect from a floor-based multi-effect—and the B100 also lacks some of my favorite go-to bass sounds: an octaver, a synth, an envelope filter. Its pedal wah sound, though, was righteous and fat. The Utopia’s real strengths lie in modulation effects like chorus, phaser, and flanger, all of which benefit from the unit’s stereo outputs. Also, Rocktron’s “hush” noise-suppression regime is no joke. I poured on the distortion sauce as thick and gnarly as I could muster, and it was still pin-drop quiet between notes. Reverb and delay are on a lot of the presets—not the most useful bass effects, in my opinion—and turning them off required the same involved edit procedure. If you favor modulation flavors, and you love getting into the numbers, the Utopia could be your ideal sonic society. Bring your own tuner, though.
PROS
Great stereo modulation effects; ultimate control for the ultra-tweaky
CONS
Some standard sounds missing; editing can be intricate
BOTTOM LINE
A perfect world for super control freaks.
SPECS
List: $289
Street: $200
Power AC adapter: (9-volt “line lump” style with proprietary jack, included)
Inputs: 1/4" bass input, 1/8" aux input
Outputs: 1/4" output left/mono and output right; 1/8" phones
Controls: Three footswitches, volume/wah expression pedal, preset select knob, three editing knobs, write button
External footswitch: None
Display: Two-line backlit blue LCD display
Dimensions: 15 3/16" x 3 1/16" x 8 7/8"
Weight: 6 lbs, 8 oz
Number of patches: 128 (64 user and 64 identical, read-only factory presets)
Warranty: One year limited
Made in: China
SECOND OPINIONS
Jonathan
“I find the editing annoying, but I could see how a real tweaker would be into it.”
Brian
“Pretty deep on the modulation front. Great for cool ’80s sounds.”