dannybuoy

Not necessarily - the EBS Microbass, Sansamps, various DI boxes all achieve it with a specially shaped low pass filter and EQ curve. No digital voodoo required!

Some octavers I've used tracked really well after fuzz and I also preferred the sound of the fuzz before octave. But I imagine the Bassballs, flanger and wah would screw the tracking up a bit. If it works and sounds good Phil, keep it the way it is - although personally I'd try the octaver either first or straight after the muff and put the flanger last.

I'm not sure the Boss is true bypass. You could by or make a true bypass looper to completely disengage the pedal from your signal chain if you like though, it's a popular option for pedals that suck your tone dry. The FX loop of an amp allows you to run effects in-between the pre-amp and power amp sections. Some effects such as delay and chorus can sound better after the pre-amp, espcially if the pre-amp is set up for an overdriven tone. Most FX loops run at a higher signal level than your basic instrument level though and most pedals won't like the higher voltage coming from your fx loop's send jack. What you can do however, if you have a pedal that can do amp simulation you can plug this straight into the fx loop return socket so you can bypass the tone colouration of your preamp and have all the sound coming from the pedal. I'm not saying you should do this though as I doubt the Boss emulation sounds better than your Mesa would. One way to get the drum machine to work would be to get a cheap little mixer like the Behringer Xenyx 502 and put it in the FX loop of your amp. This will let you blend in a bit of drum machine signal to your main output.

Dave, what would it take to add a switchable speaker sim on the DI/line/headphone outputs? This pedal would really have my interest then!

I think there's 2 BYOC ones, a Ross clone, and an optical one based on an old DOD280 pedal (so look for reviews of those to see how they might sound). I would try and build a compressor similar to the Demeter Compulator (regarded by some as the best bass compressor pedal). I've had my eye on these 2 and thinking of doing it one day, the [url="http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1043&p=12919&hilit=baja+compulator#p12919"]Baja Compulator[/url] and the [url="http://www.freestompboxes.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=617&st=0&sk=t&sd=a"]Flatline[/url] [url="http://www.geofex.com/PCB_layouts/Layouts/flatline.pdf"](additional link)[/url].

I'm going down the road of preamp pedals used in conjunction with a power amp / cab combination. I rarely get to take my own amp along to gigs (so I'm selling it), a setup like this lets you take your sound with you wherever you go. I have the VT Bass now, but I get the depressing/exhilarating feeling that I am now going to buy the Tone Hammer as well, and any other preamp that comes out and gets hyped to buggery!

My VT Bass I had on pre-order from the US finally came in yesterday - my board is now looking a bit more full! I'm pretty much done with this set up, I might add a compressor and/or tremolo at a later stage - which might need me to swap the tuner for a Korg Pitchblack to fit them on! Done, yeah right, whatever you say Dannybuoy... I'm going to build a switch box so that I can change the order of the VT Bass and SMMH (SMMH ideally comes last but in some situations I will want the VT last so I can drive a power amp with it or split the SMMH signal so I can have a clean signal to the amp and the VT signal to the desk) and I'm also planning on modding the 442 filter to be able to use an expression pedal. Just a bit too busy at the moment, about to move house and go on holiday in the same week!

You need a pair of winkle-pickers!

Earthbound Supercollider is my choice... Loads of sample clips over at talkbass.

And the award for most pedals ever squezed onto a Pedaltrain Jr goes too... Nice board Dangerboy, let me know when you're next playing live and I'll try and come down and see it in action! Finbar - The Aguilar Tonehammer might be right up your alley (it's not out yet though), and The Bass Gallery in London sell Aguilar stuff.

I know you said no distortion, but I'm gonna break your rule. Make a synth pedal like this: Octave -> Fuzz -> Filter Octave can be whatever tracks well. Fuzz should be something really heavy with a nice top end, like a Maestro Brassmaster or Tonebender clone. For the filter I would go for a low pass Korg MS20 or a DOD 440 clone, controllable by either an expression pedal or taking an envelope signal from the very start of the chain (so it's clean and hasn't been messed with by the octave or fuzz). Hell, make one of these and I'd buy it off you!

If you don't like it, sell it for £30. You can't lose!

I use the Dunlop Tortex Trangles, nice and big to get a good grip on! Give em a try:

Just buy a pick, it's not that hard to learn. Your hand will ache until you get used to it, but it's all part of learning the instrument and different ways of playing it. A pick will cost you 25p, a Steel Leather pedal will give you more of a spiky transient at the beginning of your note but it won't sound like a pick and will cost a lot more!

If you've got £160 to lay down, I would go for the Demeter Compulator. That's what I'm after next anyway!

The 442 sounds awesome after a fuzz, really synth-like. I've been meaning to make an expression pedal mod to mine, bought everything I need bar the expression pedal which I might get this weekend!

[quote name='JohnSlade07' post='246770' date='Jul 24 2008, 12:25 PM']Thanks guys. As long as it works that's fine. Unlikely (touch wood) to need to use it like that anyway. Out of interest are the amp models/effects on the B2.1U much different from the basic B1?[/quote] I think they're the same, you've just probably got less of them to choose from.

I did this with my Zoom B2 (except I plugged it into a DI box, then the PA) and it sounded amazing. They had a really powerful PA and it sounded better than most amps I've used live. Pretty amazing for a little box that cost me £25 off these very forums! I rarely use my own amp live and usually share another band's amps or use the house backline which varies in quality. Now I'll use the B2 wherever possible as my amp going direct, everything turned off except for the Ampeg amp model, sometimes I use the EQ. I'll probably replace this with a VT Bass pedal in the future (as it's easier to tweak, hopefully sounds even better, and the Zoom B2 is noisy on my daisy chain).

I'm going a similar route, going ampless with a VT Bass (sounds better than a regular Sansamp, with more mids and more tones on offer, apparently) and a Radial JDI. Aguilar Tone Hammer is getting a lot of pre-release hype also. What I've seen someone do before is a use Sansamp BDDI, take the unaffected output to an MXR-M80, and send an effected DI from each box straight to the desk, letting the soundman have 2 pre-amp signals to blend together. Sounded pretty good to me. But this is a good way to blend 2 pre-amps without the need for a separate blender like the Boss LS-2, as long as one of them as a clean output like the Sansamp does.