cheddatom

OK, I read the story and that's pretty cool. One thing I don't get - does your memory man have two outputs going to the two returns on the LS-2? Also, when you have the two loops going at full volume, and then you mute one of them with the volume pedal, do you get a big drop in level? Cos the one loop you'd hear would be on only half level at the LS-2? It's a great idea, and I have been thinking about something similar, but I was going to use a stereo volume pedal as a blender, rather than use two volume pedals. This way there would be no drop in level (if the loops had the same max level) when switching from one to another, or having them both at once.

My leack of headroom wasn't really that I wasn't loud enough, but that my amp tended to break up in a way that I didn't want at the volume I had it, so extra headroom gave me the same level but a different tone. I think the fact that I (used to) gig with 25 pedals means that i'm more biased to the gear side of the argument. Like you say, when using lots of pedals "at that point the gear becomes much more essential to the sound".

[quote name='alexclaber' post='231844' date='Jul 3 2008, 11:08 AM']If your tone is that far removed from the tone you want then yes - but it's always worth seeing how you can get closer to that tone with your existing gear. In my opinion most tone problems are tied in with not being loud enough or at least not audible enough in the mix and sadly in the majority of cases these are more easily solved by changing what the guitarist is doing, not what you are! Alex[/quote] The two examples I gave were quite subtle changes in tone that would not have been achievable if I hadn't bought the gear. Not "that far removed". I certainly agree that you should use your gear to it's maximum potential, and I have seen a few guys spend loads of money on gear to try and get a better sound even after I have told them that they needn't do it. One guy I know bought a big trace stack because he always sounded sh*t. I kept telling him it was because he gets carried away at gigs and misses his strings, or hits the wrong ones with his flailing pick hand, but he didn't believe me 'cos he sounded fine at home. He sounded better at home with the TE stack, but he still sounded sh*t at gigs.

Why do you need two volume pedals? I thought they'd be expression pedals.

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='231734' date='Jul 3 2008, 02:37 AM']That's sort-of my point. He'd still sound like Jaco, you'd still know it was Jaco. Whereas some other half-arsed faker like me given a '62 Jazz fretless and a huge Acoustic 370 rig would still sound like a half-arsed faker. I bet everybody here's gone through periods where they're frustrated with their sound and tried spending their way out of it. It never works. It's very rarely your gear that needs to change - unless you have majorly crappy gear - the only way is to learn/play your way out of it.[/quote] I think maybe a better question would be to ask: What makes up a players "sound". Is it his playing style? or is it his tone? You would be able to tell if jaco was playing the bass, because you're familiar with his style of playing - nothing to do with the sound of his bass, amp, strings etc. If you think this represents his "sound" then fair enough. I think that Jaco had a disctinctive bass tone - lots of people have tried to copy this since, and succeeded, the only reason they don't "sound" like Jaco is because they have a different playing style. However, I would say that these people have a "Jaco sound" or "Jaco tone" (and it doesn't matter what gear they use to make it). If Jaco was playing a sh*t bass through a sh*t 8" practice combo, then he would sound sh*t. You would be able to tell from the style that it was Jaco, but Jaco wouldn't have the distinctive "Jaco tone", and IMHO the "Jaco sound" wouldn't be there. I think that some people play gigs with a bass, a cable, and an amp. Of course these people think it's all in their fingers - they could never change tone without relying on their fingers! If this works, then that's fine, but so often bassists will get to a studio and be blown away by the tone the engineer gets them, or borrow a pro rig and be amazed at their tone. I think in quite a few situations, if you are frustrated with your "sound" (tone) then it can be solved by changing your gear. I was frustrated at a lack of bottom end and headroom, so I bought an 18" extension cab. I was frustrated at a lack of punch, so I bought a blending pedal etc.

The Tascam DR-1 looks great!

If it's for simple easy demos at band practice or whatever, then something like a dictaphone with decent built in mic (Zoom H2?) is what you want. If you want to make multi-track recordings, that's a different matter.

If you just tap the strings 8 times at the start or something, it'll be easy enough to sink up, just get those 8 in time and the rest will follow (obviously).

The LS-2 is a seriously useful pedal. The LMB-3 is a great limiter, but god knows what they're trying to do with the enhance knob. If you leave that off, it's great. I've tried the behringer clone and it's perfect (but plastic) and miles cheaper!

Try the echohead, seriously. I know it's a cheap pedal, but that doesn't mean it'll sound cheap. It'll save you money, and it's dead easy to get a foot switch for tap tempo, and much easier to use than any pedal with one footswitch that you have to hold down or whatever to turn on the tap tempo.

Spot on cant do. I should have pointed out that I took the OP to relate to tone and not "sound" as in "sound in general".

I don't think the jaco analogy is very valid. He had a playing style that was distinctive. You would recognise his playing style, but think he had sh*t tone. Your fingers control the long of the notes you play, when you play them, how fast etc. Although you might be pedantic and say "you need your fingers to use EQ", it's quite obvious to me that TONE comes from the amplification used. This includes everything from the electronics in your bass, to your pedals, to your amp. YES, it is often easy to replicate a certain sound on an unknown rig. However, it's certainly not always going to happen. Either way, I think this point demonstrates how important your pedals/amp/bass EQ are in sculpting your sound. It all depends on the sound you like. If you like a tone that is basically made up of a bit of EQ and compression, and the sound of your bass, then it's always going to be easy for you to get a tone you like, or to infact replicate your tone on an unknown rig. For me personally (and i'm sure lots of BCers) it's pretty damn difficult to get my sound out of any other rig. If I didn't have my pedal board at a gig, I would still be playing with my style, but I wouldn't have my tone and more importantly the band wouldn't sound the same. If I have my pedal board, but I am asked to use someones ashdown stack, i'm a bit f*cked. This is because the ashdowns I have used don't have enough flexibility in their EQ for me to be able to "sculpt" my sound. It's not as simple as "fingers". Some people are confusing style with tone. EDIT: That Clapton example up there is another instance of this. The guy had Clapton's tone, but he couldn't play like Clapton, so of course he didn't sound like Clapton! He still had Clapton's tone though.

Marshall echohead! It has tap tempo if you plug in a momentary footswitch. EDIT: And is generally a great pedal all round, works great with bass, has several modes all of which are useful, it's made of metal etc.

I don't know what the multi-comp is like, but if you can set the attack time a little later, that might help. Also, blending is a good suggestion, but I don't think it would make it ok to have the bass drive on the whole time. You could have a few different pedals in the blended loop though. I would suggest buying a good low gain OD pedal, boss ODB-3 or Marshal jackhammer or something similar, and put this in a blend loop at about 50%. Put a compressor with slow attack on your "clean" signal that you're blending with. Put a limiter after the the whole thing. You could leave the overdrive on the whole time, just adding a bit of "bite" rather than "dirt", and then you could use the bass drive in conjuntion with your new overdrive for when you want more dirt. A Bi-amp setup would be useful, but obviously not essential - if you have a full range amp, you should be able to get the tone you're looking for.

My sound comes from my bi-amp rig with sh*t load of EQ, my 25 pedals, and my technique (swapping from finger to slap to pick to all kind of nonsense). My basses sound very different, but I can use my rig to make them sound the same.

I see, that's understandable. A general question to all of those who gig with more than one bass: Do you leave your basses plugged in all of the time, and use a channel switcher to switch between basses? I can see the need for a switchable volume control, so that the volume for each bass can be levelled out and set, and switched. However, I don't understand why you would leave basses plugged into an A/B switch all the time, it would really annoy me! I have always used a mute switch and just swapped the jack cable going into my bass. Do you think this looks unproffessional?

Instead of plugging into return A and return B, plug into the input jack, and set the mode to A/B. Then you can use the LS-2's footswitch as an A/B switch with adjustable levels, and get rid of your AB-2

Yes, but I don't see why you can't plug the wireless straight into the LS-2 instead of using the AB2?

I said in PM to OG but thought it would be helpful here: You can switch up by 10 patches with the B2.1U if you have an external footswitch. If you set A2 and B2 and C2 all the same, you can seamlessley switch between banks of 3 effects - i.e. you want to move from A2 to B1 seamlessley? Change to B2 first, and then down one. If you want to be able to switch up AND down with the B2.1U you have to mod it. The mod is easy - basically attach a couple of momentary footswitches to the "finger buttons" that go up and down 10.

I don't fully understand this, but..... I heard that "star grounded" connectors are better than fully isolated, especially for getting rid of ground loops. I don't know which way it works, but I have a godlyke powerall that I run at least 18 pedals off, and it's noise free!