dannybuoy

If you settled with your rig 12 years ago, what did you land upon? Modern amps and cabs certainly have advantages over weight, power handling, volume, clarity, etc. But a lot of them sound too clean and clinical for my liking. I like to take the hybrid route - modern lightweight and power, but with some of that 70s vibe by adding a touch of drive and using vintage voiced cabs.

Most apps have latency settings you can adjust, although some go lower than others. If you run Audiobus though, you can run any app inside it and control the latency through that. There are quite a few amp sims on iOS, Tonestack is a favourite, but actually the Ampeg amps in the free Garageband app sound amazing!

I really wanted one of the 2018 satin black models in a 5 string, but not many of them appeared on these shores as there were quite a few clearance bargains around from the 2017 range! They sound like a Thunderbird but not as muddy, from what I can gather, and typically weigh under 8lbs.

Orange Terror Bass gets my vote. Just remember the EQ is an old school passive tonestack that's scooped with the knobs at noon. Flat is with the bass and treble off and the mids maxed. Bit weird to get your head round but dad easy to find a great sound with minimal twiddling. There are also a ton of pedals you can use to get that sound out of any amp.

Boss TU-3S is always on and half the size: Combine that with a tiny mute switch. Hunt down, DIY, or get someone to make one in this size box (this JHS one is a mute switch but only momentary so you’d have to hold your foot on it):

I keep the gain fairly low around 9 o’clock. It’s a very dark sounding pedal so don’t be afraid to boost the treble further than you would normally on other pedals, mine’s at 3 o’clock. The switch in the up position sounds fatter, but the down position is also rather obese!

I tried those same Dunlop strings and found them too floppy for my liking. I had to adjust the setup quite a bit to get them playable! I have a 4-string set of NYXLs, just need to obtain a low B and I'll be trying those out next to see if I prefer them over the regular D'Addario nickels...

I'd run everything straight into the amp. Most pedals are designed to run at instrument level, some don't like the higher line level that FX loops run at. Running modulation and time based effects on the loop is only really beneficial when your preamp is providing your overdrive sound, which is more common on guitar than bass. Compression is generally best before EQ, otherwise you could for example boost the bass EQ and end up over-compressing. I'd go Comp -> Pre -> Chorus. Tuner can go at the end if you want a more thorough mute switch if your chorus is prone to making a wooshing noise when everything else is silent. Otherwise would be best to place it before the chorus so you don't have to deactivate it in order to tune up!

I'm not aware of anywhere you can do that over here. There was an FXPedalRental company run by a member on here, but they're no longer operating as far as I know (although @tonyxtiger might still have a lot of stock!). Do you know what you were looking to hire?

I'm guessing a 735 in passive mode will pretty much sound like a 435. Does the treble control turn into a tone control in passive mode? Still lusting after a black 735A to complement my black 1025X, but have other spending priorities in life right now. Although if I join a band again, I will surely need a backup, that will one day be my excuse!

Don't get me wrong, there will be amps out there that would sound glorious with the BB straight in. An Ampeg tube monster set to ear bleeding levels for example! But my Orange Terror doesn't have much tone shaping on offer, so I treat it like a power amp, and treat my preamp pedal as an extension of that. So in theory, I am plugged 'straight in' to my chosen preamp/poweramp combination! An active bass will not deliver what I'm after though, I want more than just a clean EQ. Bass sounds wrong to me without a bit of drive!

Are you just using the front pickup? If I want upper mid bite, I use the middle position. Have you done much experimentation with different amps/preamps? I ended up using pedals to tweak my tone, strings and pickups can only go so far., and keeping strings fresh is both expensive and time consuming. I don't like the sound of my BB straight into my amp, but combine it with the right preamp and it's the best bass I've heard! The Tech21 VTDI is a favourite for bringing out the upper mid bite, and if the strings are going dead, all I have to do is turn up the character control a bit and the strings sound new again. Therefore the pedal pays for itself if your strings last all year!

Much more than that though and they’re competing with the Helix HX Effects (£359) which probably offers a lot more than this. I’d expect it to be under £300, but then again we don’t know what ‘it’ is yet!

Bass Direct's website appears rather old school, like each page is edited manually, rather than having it linked to a database that keeps track of what's in stock. It's fairly understandable, it's either a big investment in technology or a lot of manual work to keep stock levels on the website up to date. I'd only trust stock levels on websites from bigger companies like Thomann or Andertons.

I bought a cheap flightcase from eBay for mine, fit like a glove except no room for cables, so they had to go in the gig bag!

I don't know much about filter designs, but if you use a charge pump, watch out for noise. Most of the ones I've encountered produce a high pitch whistling that can leak into the audio path. e.g. a big culprit was the RMI Dual Band Compressor - it was fine on isolated power, but stick it on a daisy chain and it was pretty audible. I put it down to the charge pump having heard the same result from using 9V-18V adaptor tips in the past.

You might not see the Spark or Mojomojo as they're analog pedals. They could try to approximate them though, they do have the Spectradrive and Tubetone algorithms after all. I would have expected to see TC try out standalone digital drive, amp/cab sim and filter pedals at some point before they tried their hand at a multi-fx. Interesting to see what they come up with though!

A couple of other things I used with that setup: An Option Knob to be able to change modes with my foot (well, it was cheaper than a MIDI setup!): Also, feeding the fake guitar into a TC Mimiq stereo doubler sounds amazing. Not too useful if you're just using a single guitar amp, but if going to the PA, recording, or just listening in headphones, it really helps separate it and make it sound like a double tracked guitar.

^ This I've left 3 bands now, with big long stints of doing nothing in between, but not once did I ever consider selling the gear. I've put too much hard work in finding gear that I like, and I love just plugging in every now and then to annoy the wife!

You can power it with a general micro usb cable / phone charger. The battery is internal, not easily removable, and charges over USB. You can leave it plugged in permanently if you wish. I'd say the original is fine, new one seems to be overkill! But it looks like the Vox can do everything this can do. Is there a particular reason you're looking at the PJB? You can use either of them alone, using both together would only serve a purpose if the headphone out on the Vox was not loud enough and you wanted to boost it with the PJB.

Surprised you managed to break one of those picks to be honest! You referring to these ones? I did find the edge to wear down quite a bit with those though: I use these:

The SVT210AV weighs less than 12kg. It's the lightest cab I've ever picked up!

Love my double SVT210AV stack!

Tapping on an iPad screen isn't quite the same as hitting a pressure senstitive pad with a stick. I think you might break the screen if you tried that! You could use the MIDI out to an adapter on the iPad though if the drum sample engine on the iPad was better than what came with your drum pad. Which may well be the case if you get a cheap unit. They're good for learning on, I have an old Yamaha DD-55. More pads than those other two, plus it comes with foot pedals. But the built in sounds are probably a lot better on the more recent devices.