Quatschmacher

I find the tracking on my Octabvre better than the T-16 I owned. However, I borrowed a T-70 from @tonyxtiger and his has had some resistors altered by Tom at Cog and it tracked almost as well.

I don’t know that model of amp but if it’s like the aux in on my Nord piano then I guess so. Not sure if the level of the soundcard will match the volume of your band though. Part of rehearsal is getting your band levels right.

I play-tested one in an isolated booth in a shop for an hour or so and didn’t care for it. Editing on that tiny screen was a pain and I thought the raw oscillators didn’t sound particularly pleasing to my ears. Others seem to like it and it does a ton of interesting stuff but it wasn’t for me.

Tuner then synth then dirt. Wheb they say that the synth needs to go first, they’re more likely talking about engaged (as opposed to bypassed) pedals as having another active effect before it in the chain (eg distortion) would mess up the tracking. Probably doesn’t matter what order if you were only using one at a time. As I said before, you might wish to have the synth running into the distortion as post-filter distortion can sound amazing.

Interesting, I did wonder.

Add to that the excellent new MXR Vintage Bass Octave.

That’s one that I’ve yet to try.

It needs the input signal to track from, but that original signal does not need to be sent to the audio output. In other words, yes, you can simply have the octave down sounding on its own. In fact, many players do this, the classic example being the OC-2 as its octave down sound is quite synthy-sounding. Having said that, having some of the dry signal mixed can give more definition to the sound. If you dial in a subtle amount, you can get it to sound more like overtone colouration than an actual note. It sounds fat.

Yes, but I don’t see why you’d want to. You’re welcome. Have you seen my Future Impact resources page? It has some tips and all my patches. If you get one to trial, make sure you have a USB-MIDI interface or audio interface with midi ports so that you can hook it up to your computer, create some sounds in the editor and put some other patches on the pedal. There are some good stock patches on the pedal but I only liked about a third of them. This pedal’s real power lies in being able to create your own patches. When I rented one, I only used the pedal and kind of wrote it off. It was only when I bought one and hooked up the editor that I really saw what it was capable of.

You could buy it direct from Panda in Hungary if all else fails. Thomann had them in but seem to not stock them at present.

There will be latency at the low end. It’s simple physics as it takes about 12ms to read half a waveform of a low E. Even the FI, brilliant as it is, can’t overcome that. The trick I use on the FI is to pitch it down an octave and play higher up, this halving the latency.

Don’t skimp on powering it. If it requires 120mA then make sure it gets it or you’ll have all sorts of weirdness happen (the presets are digitally controlled and will likely fail to work if underpowered). See if the One Spot powers enough. If not, a dedicated power box is a great thing. I waited far too long before getting one. By “daisy chaining” do you mean the power or do you mean audio signal order? If the latter, put the synth before the distortion as post filter distortion sounds cool and you could likely use it in conjunction with the synth. The other way round probably won’t be as useful as running the drive into the synth (if both are engaged) might mess up the tracking.

There are plenty of free presets. I’ve shared all the ones I’ve made so far as have others. You can still tweak those on the pedal and get them to sound quite different. There are also purchasable sound packs which don’t cost the earth.

Enzo sounds great and has the advantage that all the sounds can be programmed directly from the pedal. However, it has some drawbacks - very limited envelope shaping options, neccessity of purchasing extra gear to access (only 16) presets, no master volume control and the bizarre feature that automatically saves the preset when you use any shift function. I’m not convinced it sounds better than the FI, just different. The SVF is a welcome bonus in the Enzo.

I’d almost agree fully (and Sub Phatty is awsome; Minitaur is also a good choice) except that the Future Impact is a synth that happens to be in pedal format.

The future Impact has a built-in tuner and does distortion if that helps. Also worth pointing out that the FI is also a keyboard synth if you hook it up to a midi controller keyboard (like a Keystep).

You can do the programming at home and then simply jump to your saved presets when playing live.

I meant deep programming via the editor. There are plenty of synth players who simply pay others to do the programming (including Herbie Hancock).

Enzo has 16 presets but requires extra outlay to access them. FI has 99 with no extra.

It’s well worth the extra. It does so much. If you don’t like programming, you can simply download patches that others have shared.

You can set up the patches however you like and simply engage them via the footswitch or midi commands. It will always play in parallel (intervallically speaking) but the offset can be whatever you like.

You may be interested in “the journey” but all roads eventually lead to the Future Impact (and then ultimately to keys). Seriously, save yourself the headache, time and money and buy a Future Impact. (Meris Enzo is a close-ish second.)

Not true with the Future Impact, you can create patches which preserve the dry bass signal too, running synth and bass in parallel. The synth doesn’t even need to necessarily be in unison either. Actually, the forthcoming update includes an advanced chord mode whereby you can play chords and a bass note and use a footswitch to change chord type on the fly.