rushbo

I ditched a board full of pedals a few years ago, in favour of a Zoom B2 and I’ve never looked back. I upgraded to the B3 and I can’t see myself moving away from that in the near future. I have a pretty minimal board, consisting of the B3, my SmoothHound wireless receiver, a Behringer pre amp and a Pitchblack tuner. I use the Pitchblack as a kill switch as it responds a little quicker than the B3. I struggled to find a slightly overdriven/gritty sound that was suitable for the songs I needed to use it on, hence the pre amp, but everything else, the B3 covers brilliantly. I use mine in the same way as you- a bank of 3 pedals, but I switch between a few banks. The only unusual thing about my rig, is that I use a Zoom expression pedal to trigger the effects. All my effects are set so that they only work when the the pedal is rocked up. This means, I can cue up my effects silently and I’ve got a bigger target to aim at with my uncoordinated feet! I’ve done hundreds of gigs with my B3, from pubs to large festivals, and it’s never let me down. The sounds available are brilliant and more than enough for most bassists, I'm sure. Take the time to get to know it and always audition your sounds through your gigging amp, as the difference between that and listening through headphones or a practice amp is immense.

Bass players and technology - it's a dangerous mix... That's a bit more like it, pricewise - I'll check that out. Thanks Skinnyman.

What page turner do you use? I've been looking at the AirTurn doohickey, but I'm not sure I can justify the cost...

Another happy ForScore user here- I use an iPad with a Hercules attachment for a mic stand and it’s been brilliant and surprisingly discreet.

I've always used these guys: https://www.ultimateproaudio.com/ Decent prices and I've never had one of their leads fail yet.

Even 10cc had a go...

I've got the precursor to this - the "Icon" model. Unless Hofner dropped the ball significantly when the model changed name, these are great basses - not just "good for the money", but good basses full stop. Light as a feather, easy to play and they sound great. Limitations? Well, the string spacing may seem a little narrow at first, but you soon get used to it. They do lend themselves to a thumpy "sixties" sound, so if your looking to go for the JJ Burnel sound or something to slap yourself silly on, this won't work. Played with a pick, with a lump of sponge at the bridge, they sound fantastic.

As interesting as these isolated tracks are, when the bass lines are taken out of context, all the fluffs, timing errors and miss-hits spring to the fore in a way that they don’t when there’s other instrumentation around them. Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with this at all. I’ve heard the backing track for this, on a “Classic Albums” TV program, I think and it sounds incredible- tight and powerful. I can’t agree with the comment that it sounds random- to me, it sounds incredibly focussed and is very much a “written” as opposed to an improvised bass part. Would I have fixed anything about that take? I doubt it.

Now I’m worried. Like a few people commenting, I’ve never even thought about string wrap alignment before, but from this day forward, that will be the first thing I notice on a bass, and my OCD will cause me to do unspeakable things...

I've just stumbled across this - an amazing version of Air's "La Femme d'Argent" that I'd never seen before. Maybe I'll dust off my copy of "Moon Safari" and find my good headphones....

Ha! Fixed.

I've got one of these. The guy I bought it from is based in Rugby and he bought all of the stock from the defunct Roberts retail business, including a bunch of basses. Mine was considerably cheaper than the one on eBay as the tone controls aren't connected. It's a lovely instrument- very distinctive and well made. Even without the tone controls, it's a great sounding instrument. I think they’re Korean made, but I could be wrong. They're active and mine also came with a good quality hard shell case and a few other bits and pieces.

For the last 2-3 years, it's been this - one of my collection of mongrel bitsas. A Squier body (stripped and resprayed in rattlecan racing red) a Mexi Jazz neck, a Schaller bridge, one Fender pup, one Entwistle pup, Gotoh machine heads, and a Kiogon toggle switch and loom. It's strung with flats and is a dream to play and incredibly versatile.

I came across this while trawling the Interweb... a cool idea, which I'm sure must have been done before. No bass version as far as I can see and the pedal assignment seems a little odd, but it's a great concept.

If you're using a power brick, it might be worth getting one of those clever connecting strands which combines two outputs into one, doubling the amount of mA the pedal gets. Songofthewind is right - Zoom pedals tend to prefer their own PSUs to anything else as both he and I have found to our cost! Then again, it might be something else entirely...

This may be the greatest, single sentence to ever appear in Basschat. Kudos sir.

Could it be due to the amount of mA the Zoom needs? Typically, they need 500mA which is more than most pedals (I think...) Have you tried it with a dedicated Zoom PSU?

It's lawyer time!

HYPOCRITE ALERT - Up until recently I was happy to have my fluctuating, modest collection of pedals, stuck to a humble piece of MDF. After 35 years of playing in bands, I finally caved in and bought a pedalboard. This is is the musical equivalent of buying a bed after sleeping on a mattress on the floor, I guess. After a false start with a Pedaltrain that was lovely, but too big for my needs, I settled on a Warwick Rockboard, which was perfect and I highly recommend them. My sad collection of gizmos is powered by a Harley Benton Power Plant Junior, which does a great job, very quietly. If you're looking to power more than five pedals however, you're going to come unstuck, as it doesn't push much power out, but fortunately, it copes well with the stuff on my board. I even found room for the tin for my spare batteries, a plectrum holder and a clock. Like Flavor Flav, I always need to know what time it is... The BDI 21 is used as a drive pedal and works a treat. Although there's a tuner on the Zoom, I prefer the Pitchblack as it doubles as a killswitch. The revelation was the Rockboard - very sturdy, great design and the soft case it came with is really well made.

I know we're not dealing with a massive outlay of cash here, but... I've used a couple of other Grolsch type washers/grommets/straplocks (Fender and some no-brand Fleabay things) and they all seem to go brittle and crack. Admittedly, it takes about two years, but they do. I bought the non Grolsch versions as the colours matched my bass or strap in the way that the Grolsch versions didn't, but now I stick to Grolsch ones. I bought fifty about 10 years ago for a few quid and they're still going strong. The Grolsch washers just seem more supple and durable - but if you get a couple of years life out of £2.59 worth of straplocks, that's still a pretty good deal!

First: 10cc, Birmingham Odeon, Sept 1978 Last: BabyBird, Hare and Hounds, Birmingham, Nov 2019 Best: Blue Nile, Town Hall, Birmingham Sept 1990 or Posies, Garage, London, 1993? Worst: Black Crowes, Phoenix Festival, July 1993 Loudest: Flaming Lips, Goldwyns, Birmingham, date unknown Seen the most: 10cc, Posies, REM Most surprising: Divine Comedy, Wulfrun Hall Wolverhampton, March 2001 Next: John Shuttleworth (does he count?) tomorrow night. Wish: Nick Drake, Led Zeppelin, Game Theory/Loud Family

Anyone come across the Not Quite Dead? If I remember rightly, their bassist played a one string bass which I though was extremely cool. I must dig my old comics out of the loft...

That sounds like the B2. I had one of those and I found that the preset sounds could be a bit hit and miss, but with a bit of a tweak, they sounded great. The exception being the fuzz and overdrive patches, which always sounded a bit fizzy. The B3 (which I love) is a bit better. Maybe the B3n has more convincing drive sounds, or maybe I just need to try harder to dial in useable sounds. I love Zoom stuff, especially their multi fx- you can’t get better bang for your buck,.

Yes. This. I love “Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”