Bass Chief & Bass Poison Ivy Review Gitarre & Bass Magazine issue 8/2025

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Poison Ivy & Sugar Skulls. It’s been almost ten years since Paul Flattley turned his hobby into a profession after a long career in aerospace electronics and started building pedals professionally. On one hand, these must meet the standards required in aviation, and on the other hand, they must please his ears as a musician.

And they are obviously not only appealing to those, as the creations produced in the family business in Heckington, Lincolnshire, England, have long since ceased to be a hidden gem.

BLING! Flattley Bass Chief and Bass Poison Ivy In the visually particularly lavishly designed Platinum series, the aluminium housings receive a coating that is hand-sanded and polished several times between the layers. Metallic, holographic chrome flakes create what Paul calls the “Flattley Sparkle”. However, the key to the special appearance is the so-called “Hydro Dipping”. Flattley has several illustrative videos on YouTube about this fascinating process. In this technique, a film is placed on water and activated, the housing is hand-dipped and takes on the graphic. Each time the result is minimally different, making every pedal unique. For fixation, the dried housing is painted again in multiple layers with wet sanding and finally polished to a high gloss. The pots screwed to the housing have grippy aluminium heads, in which their function is laser-engraved. This is not only a very cool idea but also preserves the beautiful graphic of the pedal. The toppers for the foot switches are made of metal and engraved, a glowing halo around the switch indicates the activated effect. Depending on the setup of your own pedalboard, the side connections for input and output as well as for a standard 9-volt power supply may be potentially obstructive. Battery operation is not provided, as a glance into the very accurately crafted and tidy interior reveals.

BASS CHIEF Silver Metal Flakes are the basis for the spectacular water-dipped graphics on the Bass Chief: Mexican sugar skulls, perfectly executed with intense depth. A very striking counterpoint to the otherwise mostly dark and/or monochromatic Bass Drives. I like it! Essentially, we are dealing with an overdrive to which a clean signal can be mixed in. The distortion level is controlled by the OVD-labelled gain knob, allowing for sonic variation. The drive section offers bass and ‘TRB’ (treble). The ‘BLND’ (blend) knob at the top left, when turned all the way to the left, provides the unprocessed clean signal, and when turned all the way to the right, it gives pure distortion sound, before the centrally placed VOL(ume) knob sets the output volume of the mix. The distortion begins with a slight crunch and increases to a full-blown medium-heavy overdrive that has not yet entered the territory of distortion. It already sounds very appealing, and this is only with OVD and VOL. The tone controls await with a truly colourful variety that can greatly manipulate the basic sound of the distortion. Really fat bass is just as accessible as extremely sharp highs, a mid-scoop is possible just like soft, singing tones that exude a fluffy fuzziness. For this, the knobs should be adjusted significantly, as the resulting boost when both are fully turned up can be caught again at the volume pot. Extreme settings can also be captured in the same way, where one EQ pot is fully turned up and the other completely turned down. Although definition and sustain are initially lost in this process, just adding a slight clean blend makes the outcome usable and interesting again. It works the other way around too.

The focal point is on a strong clean sound with a pleasingly powerful distortion that works excellently – again, it’s nice to tweak the tone control of the drive. A really fine, flexible pedal with a good fundamental sound and great adjustment and application options – both as an effect in the true sense and as a more or less clean always-on preamp pedal. The playability with the pedal is gripping and dynamic – very enjoyable! The clean sound, along with the matching topper of the sturdy footswitch with a skull design and the LED ring, which works clearly and without glare, can also be quite convincing. Extremely satisfying!

BASS POISON IVY The praise also applies to the same components on the Poison Ivy. “Bass Poison Ivy,” to be precise, because there is also a guitar version with a completely different circuit. Compared to the colourful Bass Chief, the graphics here, applied via Hydro Dipping, appear almost colourless. However, upon closer inspection and under the right lighting conditions, delicate metal flakes can also be seen as the basis. In the bass-optimized pedal, a fuzz control sets the distortion level before moving on to the attack control, which can be imagined as a blend between the regular tone and one with a distinct treble boost. The blend control then mixes the distortion with the clean signal that has been split off after the first input buffer. Volume, unsurprisingly, indicates the overall volume of the pedal. Nice detail:

In full effect sound, it starts off noticeably distorted, with significantly more wool in the tone than the Bass Chief. The further I turn up the fuzz, the more the sound progresses into the mids and acquires a rather boxy character. Not uninteresting, but if that were the only sound, I would be inclined to put the pedal back in the box. However, that’s not the case. The highs are handled by the Attack knob, which, along with the aforementioned treble boost, also gradually adds gain in the upper register, even when the fuzz itself is completely turned down. At full power, the Attack knob definitely brings out the screech… Sorry: the circular saw – with that, you definitely won’t go unheard! At the other end of the frequency spectrum, the foundation still falls short, but here too, adjustments can be made. Just a slight turn of the blend pot balances things out again and makes the tone suitable for band use. It almost feels like a three-part signal that can be recombined in all possible combinations using the three knobs. It’s fun to work with more clean sound as the basis; all mixes have their own character and their own appeal. The pedal will probably be used less as ‘always on’ compared to the tamer Bass Chief, but as a very flexible fuzz, it performs extremely well!

SUMMARY I rarely have pedals in my hand that I just want to look at for a long time. The Flattley’s are really beautifully made, with graphics that gain great depth from the Holo-Flakes. But not only the appearance is convincing; I can also report only good things about the sound and usability. The Bass Chief covers a wide range: from clean with a slight addition of thump and assertive clang to more intense overdrive, the results are always quick to adjust – whether it should be unobtrusive or impossible to miss in a band context. Just as inspiring, and definitely more in the ‘impossible to miss’ category, is the Bass Poison Ivy Fuzz, which offers a multitude of sounds with its interesting circuitry and simple operation. The Bass Chief is more relaxed in comparison. With a similarly wide range of achievable sounds, I find results with it more quickly. It always delivers new, inspiring tones that can fit into the band context from unobtrusive to impossible to miss. The prices for pedals that are handmade in a family business, hand-wired, and elaborately decorated and painted with graphics are absolutely reasonable. Clear recommendation for testing!