dannybuoy

There's no way those Spider cases will ever fall apart, they are SOLID. I got the medium size one, but now use a Pedaltrain Jr with a soft case as it's easier to carry round on public transport. The Pedaltrain Jr sits snug inside with enough room spare down the side for a large volume pedal or something, so I'm hanging onto it so I can use it for extra protection if needed!

[quote name='Geek99' post='245051' date='Jul 22 2008, 08:17 AM']yes, just got a 64 bit machine that I need to put XP on, so may try again. It'll get a new windows disk (being x64) so may work better as the drivers and stuff will all be more up to date)[/quote] Don't bother with XP 64 bit, you'll enter a whole world of hurt. 32 bit has MUCH better driver support, and Vista is still a little flaky for some audio apps and plugins. XP 32 bit is still the most stable version of Windows for audio production!

I would go for the Jamman or the Stereo Memory Man with Hazarai. Jamman - has an SD card slot so you can put drum tracks on it, or samples of synths/instruments from your PC to use live. I think it has up to 99 loops, and you can plug in an external footswitch to flick between them. Doesn't have reverse function that the Boss has though, but otherwise I think it beats it. SMMH - Only 30 second loop length, but has really excellent delay/reverb/flanger sounds in it that you can use in the recorded loops. You can filter, reverse and speed up / slow down these loops to make really good ambient noise swashes and stuff. If you only want a basic looper (i.e. no multiple selectable loops or undo functions) but with a whole host of features the other pedals don't have I would go for this - I did!

There's a discontinued Trace SMX dual compressor pedal by the way. Meant to be pretty good too.

If you want something to fatten and warm up your sound, try a DHA, EHX Blackfinger, or Jacques Fat Burner. For something more transparent get the Demeter Compulator (expensive) or BBE Opto Stomp (cheap). I'm looking to get either a Fat Burner or Compulator at some point...

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='241068' date='Jul 16 2008, 04:56 PM']Yeah I had a look around to see what else was available but AFAIK the Moog is a 50Kohm pot, and the Meatball filter will close with around 20Kohm so the Bespeco is a better match. I imagine if I had the Moog only about half the pedal travel would do anything.[/quote] I'm not sure if I got this right in my head but,for my purposes at least, the resistance doesn't matter. There are 3 connections on the TRS cable, connected to 3 points in the potentiometer. One connects to +9v, one to ground, and the third returns a voltage between 0v and 9v depending on where the pedal is. Of course I may have got all this wrong, but I'm going to do a bit of checking with a multimeter before I commit to soldering everything down!

About that Bespeco expression pedal, I was considering one myself, but have just ordered a Moog EP-2 pedal from Digital Village for £28.99. Looks a lot better quality and is still pretty cheap. I've just received the bits I need to go ahead and mod my Tonefactor 442 filter for manual expression control, fingers crossed I don't cock it up!

Make sure it's not your cables first of all. If you're going through 2 poor quality cables you'll notice a difference. I don't know about the Sadowksy, but there are definitely a few pedals out ther marketed as true bypass that actually aren't. I know what you mean though with some non-TB effects; I love my Bad Monkey pedal, but it does alter the tone in bypass. It makes it sound colder and I prefer the natural sound of the bass hooked up to the amp in this situation. Funnily enough though, that buffered signal from the bypassed pedal makes the next pedal in line, an Earthbound Supercollider, absolutely sing! The fuzz sound is so much fuller than just using the the Supercollider alone. So I guess it's swings and roundabouts...

Try a Godlyke Power Pump. It's similar to the Diago 18v adaptor but has variable voltage. Also, have you tried the DHA at 9v? It's supposed to accept 9-12v but sound 'weaker' with 9v. You may be happy with the sound though, so give it a shot. They ship to the UK direct form the Godlyke site, or you might find a distributor over here.

Digital Village are selling the VT Bass at the moment and are willing to price match the Thomann.de price (around £125) according to someone at TB. I've got one order from the US for $150 + $20 shipping, which works out at about £85 if I manage to dodge import taxes (I've been lucky so far with everything I've ordered from overseas!).

Yeah, there's an active thread over at Talkbass about the Behringer clone, apparently people are loving it. There was another thread on there with sound clips comparing it to the real thing and people found it hard to tell which was which. Still, I'm going for the VT Bass instead (when I can eventually get hold of one).

I get noise from my Zoom B2 when on the daisy chain, it works fine with it's own power supply though. I think it may be some kind of earthing issue, as when on the daisy chain it's really noisy through headphones, but pretty silent when hooked up to my audio interface.

Sounds to me like the OP wanted to make his own though!

Also [url="http://thebassgallery.com"]thebassgallery.com[/url] in London, they told me end of June for stock, so they might even have them in now.

Fair enough - it's just that sometimes we hear that question and it turns out they're using a crap bass through a 20W practice amp and trying to fix it with pedals! I suggest a DHA VT1 overdrive (or even the compressor). By turning the gain down the signal remains clean yet still manages to add great dollops of lard to your tone. If you go down the dual amp route, linking them up with a stereo chorus pedal on subtle settings gets great results.

Dave, what do you have to say on the matter of active vs. passive DIs in the chain I was talking about above? I thought I would be best off with a passive DI like the Radial JDI or ProDI.