Kiwi

I'm a bit wary of all in one units at the moment. All it takes is for it to do one thing less than expected and the whole unit ends up redundant. Seven pedals is a lot but, as you have probably read, if one doesn't do the job as expected then I can swap it and leave the rest of the pedal board as is.

Update: I've been doing yet more digging around on Google and on another forum found a comparison of the EHX Freeze with the EHX SuperEgo Plus (basically a pseudo synth and effects pedal) and the Gamechanger Pedal Plus. You might have already heard Gamechanger, they made a pedal that relies on plasma spark to make your guitar sound like a Tesla coil. Anyway, they also make a sustain pedal call the Pedal Plus and it appears to have a wet only output. It's a big pedal but seems to have a lot of potential. https://www.gamechangeraudio.com/pluspedal/

I was going to recommend them as well. Sei (Martin Petersen) used to get their instruments finished there before getting Simms involved. Simms are insanely expensive for an off-the-street punter. I've finished instruments and yes there's a lot of labour involved in a gloss finish with all that hand rubbing with 800 grit towards the end. But not 850 quid's worth.

The weak die. Wishing you a warm welcome BTW. ❤️❤️

I discovered yesterday that there's no triangle wave available in the waveforms of the C4 but it does have a sine wave. Whereas the FI has a triangle waveform but no sine. I"m guessing that's because they sound kind of close but the triangle sounds a bit warmer to my ears. For editing single patches I'm finding the Neuro editor is much much easier to use than the FI. Mainly this is due to the use of pull down menus which shows quickly what is set up and how it's connected to other sections. By comparison, the FI user interface is more like a 70's modular synth so it's necessary to look at the sliders to know what is happening and where signal is going, then imagine how that is connected.

That would technically make us Batchat. Could be worse, I suppose. Where's Bill Oddie when one needs him...? It's well known that he is partial to a bit of heavyweight funk.

Fixed it for you!

OK I'd be happy to do that. But what I'm looking for is basic SHIFT/CTRL+click functionality to select more than one patch at the same time. OK assuming it's plug in and play, I will give that a go and see what happens. Disaster Area have made their micro.Ghost USB to MIDI converter available for use with SA pedals but it's US$89 and the SA Neuro Hub is $99 plus the cost of the footswitches! I'd say it's a negative if I have to spend that much to make the pedal have the same basic functionality as the others on my board. It seems like they prioritised the form factor over connectivity and convenience. A slightly larger box would have allowed a second patch selecting footswitch and both USB and MIDI sockets...consistent with other MIDI capable pedal manufacturers. It's one thing to be ahead of the curve but it's quite another to be leaving people behind and then requiring more dosh (from either them or other suppliers) to give them the basic connectivity in pedals by other manufacturers. I've had a look through the user manual and haven't managed to find a reference to the app sending signals to the pedal via audio. The internal cross referencing hyperlinks in the PDF don't work either. Leafing through the manual also reveals many references to using the pedal with a DAW including justification for using a USB socket. I find this baffling since most composers will already have access to the same functionality in any one of hundreds of MIDI capable keyboards and an arpeggiating functionality in the sequencing software they use. I'd expect most players will be using this pedal to do things live that they can't do in the studio. Well that's an explanation I guess. Having a sparingly used guitar sitting on the lap for half a day while editing a patch isn't convenient. Much better I guess to use some kind of cheap keyboard with a 6.35mm output jack which could connect to the C4. Or the editor can assign an octave of notes to keys on the PC keyboard in the same layout as a piano keyboard and use the Windows GM MIDI wavetable as an audio source. It's been done before. Yes I was aware of it. I mentioned earlier that tapping a patch resulted in a message 'sent to pedal' even when the pedal wasn't connected. When I'm downloading I don't have my bass plugged in. It's inconvenient and uncomfortable to be reaching over it to type or use the mouse for any long periods of time. For short durations it's no problem. Don't get me wrong about the C4. It does the thing I got it for really well. But it's let down by a lack of consideration for finer details of the user. It's like the designers had a set of goals they wanted to achieve that weren't 100% aligned with how people use pedals like this in their pedal boards. They're not alone, I've mentioned something similar about Eventide as well. The Pitchfactor has an arp (which is where this journey began originally) but it's not user programmable...even in the editing software!

So the C4 and EHX Tri Parallel Mixer arrived courtesy of a personal courier on Friday. The Tri mixer is a nice bit of kit, very smooth operation and noise free. So far I have only been able to scratch the surface of the C4 with the editor in setting up an account, downloading some user patches and assigning them to the toggle switch so I can listen to them. The lack of a MIDI IN/OUT port or the ability to switch between all 128 patches without getting extra kit is a major fail for me. However, the pedal tracks slightly better than the FI and the sounds are full and warm. The need for a wet only Freeze pedal has been confirmed. Hitting a second note while the Freeze is sustaining sends the C4 tracking for the arpeggiator into a garbled mess. The arpeggiator itself is great, the notes are full with good attack and distinction, it's exactly what I have been looking for. The desktop editor is functional but user interface still needs improving. The ability to select multiple patches to save/upload/download/export/import is badly needed. At the moment it is patch by patch. The phone app was confusing to use, it wasn't clear how to get patches into the pedal and I was getting a transferred to pedal message from tapping patches even though the app was clearly not attached to the pedal. It would also be useful to have a way to check the patches using an integrated piano keyboard like the FI's editor has. Also, when downloading and burning a patch the editor returns to the library screen rather than the screen where you were last working meaning it takes a good two or three clicks to get back where you were to do the next save/burn/upload. Next steps will be to sort out some glitchy cables, try and find a modded Freeze pedal from somewhere...given Mimmotronics don't seem to be interested in talking to me. And I will also start setting up some patches for the songs I like.

A bit late to the game but it's a vectorised graphic.

I'll put the kettle on then. Watch out for congestion around Istanbul.

Yep I got that and when I was gigging, all of my gigs had PA support and an engineer so horses for courses I guess. In any case, the F112 can be stacked on its end if the wedge function isn't needed for some gigs.

I'm daft enough. But you'll have to collect it.

Unless the engineer takes a feed out of the DI socket on the amp (assuming of course that you have an engineer and PA reinforcement). I don't believe loud stage volumes are helpful in any case. I actually left one band because the drummer was too loud. When he lowered the volume we played so much tighter but he just couldn't keep the beast chained up for long.

Yep speculative. It's arriving next week but it's a no brainer. I have bought next to nothing in 2019 apart from a Moment Machine, an EHX Freeze and a Adrenalinn 3 plus a small 4 channel mixer and that signal switcher. The C4 is highly anticipated. Happy to delete if it's not in the spirit of the thread though.

I was in the same situation a few years back and went with a couple of F112. I have been really impressed by them. In a BC gear shoot out a few years back my cab was up against a BB2 and (to my ears at least) had more detail in the high end and a flatter response - just like a PA cab. Other BCers seem impressed by it too but I thought the F112 perhaps didn't get the full recognition it deserved by the crowd towards the end of the shoot out. We all like different things I guess. I chose the F112 because of the stiff construction and it came in a wedge format which meant I could hear myself more easily on small stages. The bulk of air wasn't being shifted past my knees like in conventional set ups. It's a great cab, I know of nothing on the market which is better at the moment.

I don't have the disposable income these days with businesses sucking it all up while they get established. So mine are modest: Best pedal is probably going to be the Sonic Audio C4...once it arrives. Worst was a Hosa SLW-333 desktop line switcher. Described as in good condition but the threads around a number of the sockets had been stripped because the sockets were poor quality and the sole PCB connector kept popping off. Cost more to ship the bloody thing than the purchase price and by the time I actually got my hands on it, I couldn't leave feedback.

That is an ex-Mark Griffiths bass, he used to play for the Shadows and Cliff. For a while he liked Jaydees and then Status basses and then Warwicks.

For pick ups, they are a very coarse tone shaping tool. You can specify a resonance peak to hit a specific frequency but that has trade offs for highs and lows as well. Usually the best approach is to make the pickups as flat as possible and fall back to the wood/construction/playing style for timbre.

There is a hell of a lot of variation in some (but not all) tone wood. Wenge is a lot more reliable than swamp ash, for example. The weight of swamp ash varies tremendously according to not only the tree but where on the tree the wood came from which is why not all jazz basses sound the same. Same thing for mahogany and maple but to a much less extreme degree. Bubinga and wenge are pretty consistent in terms of their effect because they are fundamentally dense and (in the case of bubinga) oily. What I've found is that matching wenge and flamed maple seems to work really well in a neck regardless of construction (ie. bolt on vs neck through). So I am going to do my next build using that combination of woods on a mahogany body (maybe chambered to lift the resonance peak a little).

You're welcome. What I've learned is that there is a balance basically between soft woods to isolate and promote desirable frequencies, and hard woods that maintain structural rigidity for the purpose of playability. AGC, Tobias and Sei have made wenge and maple necked instruments I've played which sound superb even if there have been other aspects that I've found less attractive. This seems to be the most reliable way to get that purr. Soft maple is an alternative but those instruments need a bit more bass or warmth around 100Hz. Other methods involve far more experimentation but if they hit the bullseye (like Jaydee did with their Supernatural range) then I suggest sticking with what has been proven. Tone wood is the first point of reference though. If the wood isn't right then it's too much like trying to paint lipstick on a gorilla.

I've been thinking about something similar. The growl can be gained from a wenge neck but it can sound a bit boxy unless tempered by a harder wood like rock maple. Soft maple can also give it too but it's not as deep as wenge more of a purr than a snarl. My Spector NS5CR is made with soft maple and it purrs nicely on stage regardless of hands or pickup position. The later Euro basses with the Alder/walnut/maple sandwich aren't as satisfying to play for me personally. I had a Euro 6 for a while. Ken Smith basses achieve it with maple and bubinga but it doesn't sound as focussed as either wenge necked Warwicks or through necked, all maple Spectors. Ken deliberately avoids making the neck too stiff, instead relying on a massive ebony fingerboard to provide the structural stiffness - I think the same is happening with my Spector NS5CR too. Consequently I found it hard to get super low (like...graphite neck low) action on my three Smiths and the Spector but they were still very playable. Fender J and P basses sometimes achieve it with a combination of light swamp ash (for jazz) or light alder (for p basses) and well seasoned hard maple that is a little on the softer side. Dingwall do it with a combination of ash+alder that meets specific weight criteria and hard maple necks. Status did it with their Series II basses using pickups and electronics. Jaydee do it by using mahogany in the necks and bodies and relatively flat response pickups. There's no single way to do it, it's like mixing different ingredients to get the same flavour. You can do it with fingers over the bridge pick up and plucking very aggressively on many (not all) basses but some people don't feel comfortable playing that way. GK amps get you close with their boost control too but it's achieved in a different way. It kind of relies on an interaction between bass and amp and the mid prominence being achieved with bass, hands, the boost control and filtering by the speaker itself. Hard to achieve at low volumes but sounds glorious at performance. I'm not aware that GK offer the boost function in a pedal because it relies on passing the boost onto the woofer while leaving the tweeter highs unaffected. What is happening in both cases is that a very narrow band of mid frequencies (around 250Hz) are getting prominence. The easiest way to do it in pedal form is with a parametric eq or a band pass filter pedal but it has to be a pedal that does an extremely narrow band of boost. So narrow that it doesn't actually affect the sound of the bass in any other way. I've done it with the eq on a mixing desk and hoped to do it with a parametric eq...which is why I actually bought an Empress Parametric eq precisely for this purpose. But even that doesn't get narrow enough so it sits on my guitar board in order to give strats more bite and shimmer. The Empress boys actually sent me a way to mod the pedal so the mid band was narrowed further but I haven't had time to plan it yet.

I love her grooves but the lyrics make me cringe sometimes. She's kind of moved on from this funky thing now anyway and has become more experimental. I went to see her in Camden when she had the Spirit Music Sextet first going, it was quite a bit of this: She sat back in the pocket and basically just lost herself while the rest of the band were looking at her intently for cues. I also remember she started an hour late and her mood soured at around 12:15am as people were leaving while they were still playing. I'm guessing no one told her that the last Northern Line train was around 12:30.