dannybuoy

I am hankering after a Rob Allen Mouse, I'm interested in any alternatives but 30" scale fretlesses seem hard to come by. Thomann make a fretless Hofner Beatle bass... and I haven't found much else available off the shelf! Any other models I may have missed, or any UK luthiers out there building anything similar to the Mouse?

The MojoMojo is very similar to the Spark, just darker/muffled and higher gain. So if you want something more modern and hifi than the Spark, this is vintage and lofi! The Vintage… well I could waffle on about it but there’s a ton of demos on YouTube that can convey how it sounds better than I can here! The newer models with the attack switch (the same pre-dirt treble boost the B7K and Alpha Omega have) would be more flexible as the original is quite dark sounding.

What are you plugging it into? For example I get a lot of noise with some preamps if I’m plugged into my PJB Bighead running on battery power, but that goes away if I plug in the USB cable to charge it. I suppose doing so grounds it. You could therefore possibly get the same issue trying to record from a laptop or iPad that isn’t plugged into the wall. If the noise changes a lot when touching the strings or putting your hand near the pickup, that would also indicate a grounding issue.

My Phase 90 has a slight volume boost! I think the newer ones are true bypass, maybe it’s just the older ones that have a volume drop.

Check out the TC Spark then! I’m favouring it over the Mojomojo lately.

Agreed, 90% of pedals don't come with power supplies, and if they did I would have a lot of junk power supplies accumulating.

The SM7B is really good at preventing plosives up close also, since the capsule is buried deep down within, which prevents you getting too close to it.

Get nice and close for the proximity effect for starters. I can highly recommend the DBX 286S for an all in one preamp, compressor, de-esser and ‘enhancer’ (it has low and high controls that sound a bit similar to BBE processing, I have no idea what they’re really doing but they sound good!).

The Diabolik is basically a smaller version of this with fewer controls. Best synths/gated fuzz I’ve tried, would love to try a B:Assmaster too!

Don't use a passive splitter, try a Boss LS-2. If your gain levels are decent through each chain but you have low volume when summing them together, then one (or any odd number!) of effects are inverting phase.

My brother’s into amateur boxing, I tried to convince him to have Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick!

It’s still a bassline in my not-so-humble opinion even though it’s played on a guitar through an octave down. A bassline doesn’t need to be played on a bass, it could be anything in the lower register, even a piano. Yes it’s the main hook... But still a bassline! 🤥🥊

Seven Nation Army?!

They’re singing the chorus!

In what way? All Tech21 pedals have a pretty good clean buffer in my experience, but any buffered non-true-bypass pedal will have the effect of brightening your tone slightly with a passive bass as it counters the signal loss you would otherwise get. One issue I remember having though is that the bypass signal distorted a bit when the gain was cranked, which was. a bit weird but didn’t affect ‘normal’ settings.

The Diabolik sounds better to me without a buffer in front of it, but I’d expect putting the OC-2 after would upset the tracking a bit. Not always the case with fuzz/drive though, so worth trying if you haven’t already!

These are great, you get a hard case and a mic clip included in the price too.

Yes, you can adjust the crossover points on the amp so that you can have the distortion and/or clean channel full range if you want to.

Maybe with the X7 / X Ultra, but then again they haven't baked that into an amp yet! The DP3X or Dug amp definitely seems the best option for that tone though unless you want to get creative with crossovers/compressors/amps in a Helix or similar.

And if they do, give it a power amp with more ‘heft’ than the VT500 and ensure the master volume can be adjusted without affecting the DI level!

Agree with the BDI21 recommendation as a solid starting point! Also the Zoom B1on / B3n do a pretty damn good emulation of a Sansamp BDDI and Darkglass B7K. For studio use you can record dry and do everything via plugins like Helix Native (which has a free trial!), but a common trick for heavier music is to mix a clean lowpassed compressed signal with a highpassed distorted signal. The Tech21 DP3X and Darkglass X7 can do this trick in one pedal.

If looking at the Billy Sheehan one, avoid the original version and go straight for the Deluxe. The dirt channel is out of phase with the clean so it sounds weird and drops low end when blended unless you put another phase inverting pedal in the fx loop. The Deluxe version fixes this with a phase switch.

That's a good thing for a PJ. Most off-the-shelf ones I've tried out didn't sound that great with both pickups on, totally different to my Yamaha BB which has a monstrously loud J pickup.

You can also connect something like a Radial JDI or Darkglass Elements in parallel with the speaker cab to capture the additional character that the power tubes provide with the addition of a speaker sim.

Setting the attack/decay knobs is crucial with these and others like it such as the Meatball. If attack is slow but decay is fast, it'll never sweep. If attack is fast but decay too slow, it'll stay wide open most of the time.