dannybuoy

I’ve not compared them, but the story goes that the 3 band is not simply a 2 band with an added mid, it does sound rather different. So not so much a case of choosing to limit yourself to two bands, but more selecting the one that delivers the sound you want. There’ll be tons of threads out there discussing the details. John East do make a model that does provide the 2-band sound with an added mid control, many 3-band owners upgrade to it for this reason.

I believe people were using the AcBsPre model in the older units (including the B3 and B1on) that didn't come with a dedicated HPF.

Thumpinator, or perhaps an FDeck or Broughton HPF, depending on why you want a HPF in the first place. The Thumpinator cuts really low (something like 28-30Hz) so should not have an audible effect on the bass spectrum, but will stop any really low freqs that would make your speaker cones lurch about as they struggled to reproduce them. End result is you can expect your speakers to last longer and to be able to squeeze more clean volume out of your rig. Those others are adjustable - so you can use them if you want to cut for example everything below 40-50Hz to tighten up the bass and reduce the amount of sub bass yet still keep the important 60-100Hz upper bass range intact. The Broughton does not have as steep a cutoff slope as the Thumpinator though, making it less effective as a <30Hz speaker protector, but much better suited as a form of EQ. The Zoom HPF is similar in operation to the Broughton I believe.

I'd change your strings first before trying anything else. 2 years is quite old for a set of rounds unless the bass had hardly been played during that time.

The Spectracomp is not only one of the cheapest compressors around, it's one of the best. I also preferred it to the Cali, a very expensive unit considered by many to be the best of the best! And you're right, the HPF in the Cali is not in the audio path. The Zoom multis certainly have some decent compressors plus a HPF, but I still prefer the Spectracomp. When it comes to a HPF like the Thumpinator, many amps have something similar already built in and just don't advertise it, so it's hard to find this information out. What are you using?

They are both alder bodies, but wood can vary from batch to batch, I might have been really lucky with my 415. The neck was a bit fatter on my 1025X, then factor in a bigger bridge, ferrules, scratchplate, control plate, metal nut and knobs, it all adds up!

I haven't weighed either of them @Al Krow, but I can tell you my 415 was a hell of a lot lighter than my 1025X! At least 1lb less, probably more like 2!

This is happening again btw!

Wait for the new Source Audio C4 if you can. It may well have all the octave/dirt/filter/synth capabilities you can dream of! https://www.talkbass.com/threads/source-audio-spectrum-inteligent-filter.1385756/

A wireless system will have the same result as say plugging into a bypassed Boss tuner. The output will be buffered and low impedance so that you can drive long cable runs and plug into low impedance inputs (like a line input of a mixer) without signal loss. The output volume should be roughly the same however. Which means that even now your signal is now ‘active’, you can still use a ‘passive’ input of your amp, because the active input is more designed for coping with really hot basses, e.g. an 18V MM Bongo with neo pickups with the EQ given some serious welly!

I just got some too, the 15mm variety!

I only ever run my basses at 100% volume, I find turning it down changes the sound. Never been an issue for me though as pretty much every amp has a switchable pad, or active/passive switch.

Well, some people that pre-ordered in the US have received theirs already, so won’t be long until we see them over here. Another video has gone up: https://youtube.com/watch?v=TR0xosuYJxs

It’s only an issue when blending digital effects. Blending your sound with itself but delayed by a few milliseconds introduces a bunch of EQ notches, known as comb filtering. Think of a flanger but stuck in one place instead of moving.

You can certainly apply some of these aspects to your patches. With AGS on you get an overdrive circuit plus a ‘speaker sim’ consisting of a fixed HPF + LPF. I prefer a simple LPF to remove top end fizz over a speaker sim, as they usually sound too dark in my experience. I don’t care that they might sound more like a real cab, if that just means it sounds muddy. So tip #1 - try the high and low EQ filters out in place of the cab sims. Also, the mid EQ is before the overdrive circuit, bass and treble after. Therefore the mid knob affects the character of the overdrive, a bit like the character knob on the VT Bass or presence knob on the BDDI. So tip #2 - try cutting a frequency range before drive then boosting it back after (or vice versa)! PS - that post says that AGS turns the treble control into a presence control. Thing is, presence is not really a technically defined term so everyone implements it differently. I thought it usually meant the frequency range above the treble control rather than below it, but then the Sansamp BDDI confuses matters by naming their pre-gain high-mid / treble boost as ‘presence’. AGS probably does not change the behaviour of the bass and treble knobs as such, it just sounds like that because of those additional filters. The HPF lets you boost bass while keeping things tight, and the LPF makes it sound like you’re boosting a lower treble frequency just because the upper ones are rolled off.

Yes, a pedal will effectively make your passive bass active. If it's switched on, or has a buffered bypass, it will have a low impedance output, and you might have a volume boost depending on what you're plugging into and how you have it set. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to use the active input. I'd only use the active input or engage the pad if I was getting unwanted clipping at the input stage of the amp. And that depends on the bass - some passive basses are louder than some active basses!

Yes, I've seen that post on TB, it was an eye opener to the scooped BDDI tones that I'd never tried before. I can get somewhat close to the Tone Hammer with some of the amp sims but not quite close enough!

At the risk of pulling a Zoom thread severely off topic... I use the dUg and the B7K fairly similarly - set to low gain so that soft playing sounds clean but digging in produces plenty of upper growl that cuts through. But I prefer the dUg as it sounds cleaner with soft playing and dirtier with agressive playing. So it's versatile in the sense that I can get a dark punchy bass sound and a super growly sound from the same pedal with the same settings, just by how I play. But there's still that massive hole in the mids unless you turn mix mode off, which sounds so different that I feel the need to change the EQ settings. But if I want to flip to a warm, slightly driven, mid focused sound though, I'll just turn the dUg off. I haven't found anything that can touch the Tone Hammer for that application!

If it bugs you that much buy a used one and sell yours on for the same price! Mine will be going up soon but I'll have to check the colour consistency!

The B7K sim is great, but it has its place. In a 50s/60s band I'd be more inclined to use something else. In a typical rock/metal track that 500 kHz scoop creates space for the guitars and vocals, letting your bass cut through the mix in the 1-2kHz area. In a more vintage scenario I'd want the bass to be more dominant in the 250-500 Hz range with not much at all going on above 1k. I'm pretty settled on using the DuG pedal and Aguilar Tonehammer for both those scenarios so my B3n isn't seeing much use at the moment!

Some cheaper cables only have two strands of wire to carry charge but not data. See what happens if you hook up a mobile phone with the same cable, if you get the chance to browse the photos on it etc, it should be a good one. Also check the manual, it's been a long time since I did it so can't remember if this applies to the Zoom, but you usually have to hold down a button when turning it on to activate the connection with these types of devices. I believe you only need to update the firmware to get the new effects btw, that's all I did, I've never installed the editing app as Windows Defender always blocked it thinking it was infected! I think they made the effects available via that app first, then bundled them into the firmware later.