dannybuoy

There are a few variants of those white nylon strings too btw, white being the brightest, copper the warmest, and gold in between. Confusingly they're all called 'white nylon' though! I have a copper set unopened that I bought to try on fretless.

The pickups in the 1025 and 2025 are most likely the same - but they do have different product codes and the 2025 ones cost more if you were to order them as spares. You’d have to ask Yamaha for clarification! As well as the heat/vibration treatment, the 2025 neck has a rubbed oil finish in the back of the neck and smoother edges around the headstock and fretboard, it feels more like a premium MusicMan in the hand. It also uses maple & mahogany (notice the darker brown) rather than maple & nato in the neck construction. The body contours are supposedly altered too, but I haven’t compared them side by side. I’d still like a 2025X but I can’t really justify the extra £ over my 1025X. If you have plenty of £ burning a hole in your pocket though, go for it!

The fly rig is only about an inch longer! And my wife assures me that shouldn't make much difference. Thing about the DP3X is at first you think "holy plop, where's my mids, everybody says I need mids to be heard". But then it make sense when you play it alongside a full mix. You still have mids, but they are high mids, above most guitars and vocals (I find boosting the mids and pressing in the shift works best in a busy mix, but prefer the shift off when you have more room sonically - I'd love that on a foot switch). So you're not battling other instruments over the same frequency range, you're wrapping above and below them, giving the overall wall of sound more depth and presence. And the compressor is pretty aggressive and gives the low end a big pop with each note, even if you're playing up high. Play softly and you're all like James Jamerson, with bugger all above 250Hz, but dig in a bit and it's like Billy Sheehan just popped in to play a few notes before promptly buggering off again.

Re the speaker sim on the VT, IMHO Tech21 dropped the ball when they first implemented it on the VT Bass and Deluxe v2 and almost fixed it with the VTDI! Why would you want a defeatable speaker sim? For me, it's because I already have vintage tweeterless cabs rolling off the top end. If the pedal has a speaker sim rolling off treble as well, I'm getting twice as much treble reduction, which might make me boost the treble and send an overly bright sound to the desk. So disabling the cab sim in theory should result in a brighter sound. But when you disable the cab sim on the VT/Deluxe v2, you get a darker sound because they added an extra treble filter. Their reasoning for this being that if you're feeding an amp instead of a desk, amps have a big treble boost that needed to be compensated for. The VTDI went some way to redress this by separating that additional treble filter into the bite switch (which is great for making it more vintage, Ste!). So if you disable the cab sim on that it opens up the top end instead of sounding darker. However there's still no way to have the cab sim apply to the XLR only, which is why I say it's only partially fixed! Still a great pedal regardless. Tech21 rule, I shall be hanging onto my VTDI, YYZ and DP3X for the foreseeable future!

Not seen you round these parts for some time! With mix mode off, it's basically a clean preamp and compressor. No Sansamp style voicing whatsoever, but you do get some mild cab-like treble rolloff on the XLR output. You'd be better off with the Bass Fly Rig if you want vintage sounds, it has a tweaked VT Bass circuit in it. However it does not have the bite/speaker sim/blend controls, and the other effects are pants including the compressor!

Same. They feel equivalent to rounds to me, perhaps a bit tighter. They are looser than most flats, but that's because most of them are like suspension bridge cables. They still feel taught and I can play hard with a low action with no issues. Dunlop Super Bright rounds though - now there's a floppy string - like playing spaghetti!

Sounds like electrical interference. Are you using a daisy chain power supply, if so what else is connected? Try the Muff by itself - being the only pedal connected to the power supply as well as being the only thing in the signal chain.

I've not heard a shimmer done as well as the Neunaber stuff. Sounds more complex and ethereal than most, without being shrill or having any glitchy artifacts. Bear in mind that they have quite a few pedals that can do shimmer, such as the Wet reverb, plus many of the pedals can be re-programmed to be a totally different pedal. So if you see their chorus cheap on eBay for example, you can hook it up to a computer and turn it into a reverb pedal.

Yeah I think .47 is vintage, .22 a bit brighter, .1 rarely used but brighter still?

Don't forget the extra costs involved of a board, patch cables and power supply. That can eat your entire budget before you've bought another pedal!

The B3n is a good place to start. For one, the B7K model in it sounds better than the real B3K if you ask me. It has a B3K model too but it sounds a bit dark for some reason! That means you could potentially sell the B3K! In terms of other effects, you may well find better individual effects out there that would beat what you get in the B3n. But it will take a bit of time and money to experiment. But no matter how good the effects may be, you might find you just don't get on with multi fx units and prefer single pedals, like me! For £120 you could pick up a used TC Spectracomp, TC Corona Mini or EHX Bass Clone, and maybe a cheap preamp like a Joyo American Sound or Beringer BDI21.

Try mids at 10 o'clock, character at 2-3 o'clock, drive at 11 o'clock, bass at noon, treble at 11, and blend just past halfway. Since playing this more however I've come to prefer the YYZ! I have to boost the mids and treble to get the same kind of bite that the VT has naturally. The top end is a lot less shrill on the YYZ too, which I like. The low end on the VT gets kind of blurry and indistinct as its being driven, whereas it's so much clearer on the YYZ (when the tight switch is pressed in), especially on a low B. When it comes to this vs the DP3X, the YYZ sounds miles better when auditioned solo, or when you want the bass to take a main role in the mix - but the DP3X works better when playing it alongside a full mix, which is where it counts I guess. Bearing in mind this is not with a live band as I'm not in one any more, this is playing along to album tracks either in headphones or my bass amp combined with hifi speakers. Pretty sure though I'd get just as good results from the YYZ by adding some additional compression and EQ. Also, if you're a fan of Geezer Butler's grindy tones on the last Sabbath album 13, the YYZ nails that! Anyone interest in getting one, check with @tonyxtiger first to see if he has any going at the discounted rate, otherwise Guitar Guitar currently have 1 in stock right now!

A guiro! Pronounced 'gee-ro' I think.

You sound pretty good together, in that track alone the bass is providing more rhythm and interest than the drums. All I could hear pretty much was the hi hats, the singer could have just played a tambourine instead - but that’s perhaps more to do with the live sound setup and/or recording! As to which to choose for each song, I don’t think you can apply a formula. If you’re going to swap instruments through the set, just choose whatever feels right if you have the final say, it sounds like if you put it to a democratic vote they’d choose cajon for every song! Ultimately I’d look for a drummer/cajon player if you prefer to play bass.

A lot of bass players will be biased though when forced to choose between only having percussion or bass. Ask a drummer and they’ll choose the cajon! A decent acoustic guitarist can cope without either if they have the necessary rhythmic chops, and they can put out a surprising amount of low end when amplified. I went to see two friends play a festival gig recently with just female vocals and acoustic guitar, and imagined what it would sound like if I were to play bass alongside them. I’d definitely would have had to get the guitarist to turn down the bass EQ for one - the root notes of each chord were quite powerful. Ideally of course, you’d add both. But if I was being totally honest and looking at it from the perspective of a typical audience member, I think a cajon would have added more excitement to the live performance than bass alone. There’s also a novelty factor since many non-musos would have never seen one before, which will get them more interested in what’s going on. In a similar way, I pulled out a Ukelele bass for a song once and it grabbed the attention of the audience like you would not believe! Another option is play bass and play foot drums simultaneously. It’s surprisingly easy to manage at least a kick drum with one foot whilst playing, I have a couple of stomp devices like these: https://www.logjam.net

Had it on my watchlist and live nearby, but only saw the notification pop up after the auction ended!

Precision plus Agro is instant Sabbath! Shame it broke!

That wouldn't quite work for me - I don't want to cut bass at the source, I want to split the signal first and only cut the bass going into the distortion side, and the full low end going into the clean side!

I didn't get in with the B3K/B7K either until I listened to it in the context of a full rock/metal mix. It also helps to have a bass that has a similar EQ profile to start with - like a Jazz with both pickups on rather than a Precision. I find it has the cut and boost in just the right places to leave breathing room for the guitars and vocals but cut through higher up the frequency range. Any shrillness or fizziness tends to disappear in the mix, especially if you don't have tweeters!

Too much low end going into the overdrive section makes things sounded bloated though, it changes the nature of the drive. Especially with a high output bass, it's best to cut the lows going into the drive and use blend and EQ to bring it back. That's why the Geddy pedal has a tight switch, and the DP3X and Darkglass X range use crossovers. And fully agree about not liking full on dirt, as a base tone at least - I never have the gain above 9-10 o'clock on my B3K or when I had the M900.

The pedal still has merit over the M900 - the grunt (AKA pre-distortion bass boost) is on permanently in the amp, I prefer the it off for a tighter sound.

I can vouch for the B7K model in the Helix being very close to the real deal having A/B'd it against my M900 with decent headphones. Even the 2 generations prior (X3 and HD line) did parallel processing but no Darkglass sim of course.

No way I'm spending that much on it though. I'll either buy used or from the US. I recently scored a Geddy YYZ pedal from US eBay for £170, which is less than I'd expect a used one to sell for over here (£250 in most shops and out of stock everywhere).

Anyhow, I still want to try one! Anybody taking the plunge?

I guess the main benefits are the cab sim, aux in, headphone out. All of which, you might find not very useful if you happen to want to run any effects after it. That could be remedied with an effects loop, shame they didn't include one! Foot-switchable distortion never made sense to me on any of the amps or ultras, since you will generally want different EQ settings with and without. The X7 doesn't have a cab sim, but it does have a mild LPF on the DI output, much like the Tech21 DP3X, which may be 'good enough' to not warrant the upgrade. I'd love to get my hands on one though, the B7K was the best thing for me in my last band until the DP3X showed up, and this is the closest thing to a hybrid! But the HX Stomp with its built in crossovers and compressors, B7K-a-like, guitar amps (and a BDDI on the way) looks like it'll be able to cop all of those sounds if you're up to the task of setting it up right!