dannybuoy

Sure, if the twin pickup bass has one in the same position as the equivalent single pickup bass, it’s a no brainer to go for the two pickups. But for me, most twin pickup basses have one pickup too far up and the other too far down. They might sound great blended together, but that results in a very different tone to a single pickup in between those spots. Like a P Bass vs a J Bass with both pickups up full, both very good but very different. Not a semi hollow, but it’s the reason I bought a single pickup Sandberg Basic over the TM4 version for example!

Oh and don’t just discount Epiphone based on your perception of the brand, the JC is good enough for these guys: http://cheapthunder.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Epiphone

First choice I would make would be the pickups. Quite a difference in tone between one central pickup (Jack Casady) and two pickups (nearly everything else). I would lean towards the JC, and put a Hipshot or Babicz bridge on to replace the stock 3 point one.

My previous band was the other way around - I went to their gigs so often I ended up befriending them and joining the band several years later!

Ok, I'll play! Clean bass, then adding the layers of Diabolik, Octabvre Mini, MXR Bass Envelope Filter, MXR Carbon Copy: https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApKsVfvGwYkOiqkL9mVycX-u9kCMAA Chain is in that order, octave after the fuzz to keep the low end clean. Recorded direct, no amp or speakers involved.

The EQ is placed after the distortion, but the character control is effectively a midrange control before the distortion. So if you boost character, you boost mids. But this allows you to get more upper mid grind without having to push the gain so high, then pull the mids back afterwards to try and flatten everything out again! E.g. try character at 3 o'clock, mids at 10 o'clock, blend at 11 o'clock.

Indeed the blend knob is a bit of a revelation when it comes to exploring grindy tones from the VT. As a low gain tube amp sim it's best to have the blend all the way up, but high gain with the character at noon or below turns to mush as a result of too much low end being fed to the overdrive section. Solution - whack up that character control to send predominantly mids to the overdrive section, then redress the balance by cutting mids and backing off the blend. It's a good way to approximate the sound of the new Tech21 DP-3X pedal if all you have to work with is the VT!

It's important to try and listen to your sound in the context of the rest of the band, which is hard to do effectively at high volume rehearsals. I like to play along to studio recordings with different combinations of basses and preamp pedals into headphones to figure out what works best. The last couple of bands I've been in have had a very thick distorted guitar tone (e.g. Les Paul into a cranked Orange tube head). Here I've found it best to use a scooped tone to provide a pillow of low end to underpin the sound, but with a bit of crispy gain up top to add clarity and fill out that upper midrange where the guitarist and vocalist don't often tread. I used a BB1025X with both pickups on which is naturally scooped and growly anyway, into a Darkglass B3K, although the Tech21 DP-3X is my weapon of choice for this tone now. If I'm playing at the jam night down my local, totally different ball game. Often more then one guitar, but usually thinner sounding, and often a higher pitched female vocalist. To slot in here I stay out of the upper mids, go easy on the deep low end and fill out the lower mids with a P-Bass or my Sandberg Basic (a bit like a Stingray), both of which are wearing TI flats. Either straight into the amp or via a low gain drive pedal of a totally different flavour to the other setup. Full range OD with no clean blend is the order of the day here, something that produces a guttural roar from below rather than grind from up top when you dig in, e.g. SFT, BB Preamp, Beta, Agro.

Have you tried the Sub'n'Up? Heard good things about the latency on that, and with it's built in EQ and modulation you could do the 12 string emulation perhaps better than anything!

Finger and thumb, pinch technique! Quite hard to route the upper string through a separate FX chain using that method though!

If you can find a used MkI that is. The MkII isn't quite as good by all accounts and only exists because of EHX's lawyers!

This is the first time that a (mainstream) band has used an octave up in conjunction with that though to pull of such an authentic sounding fake guitar from the bass. Those guys might have great bi-amped tones, but they don't sound like guitars. People are shocked when they find out there is no guitarist in Royal Blood! Anyway, enough of a thread derail this has been!

Good sounding low latency polyphonic octave up still eludes a lot of manufacturers, even the £1K Line6 Helix is nowhere near as good as my £50 Mooer Tender Octaver, which is ripped off of the EHX POG. Then it's not just fuzz you want but a Fender guitar amp sim, even better if over stereo outputs with a bit of delay to simulate his wall of amps (I use a TC Mimiq to cop that). But an extra fuzz stomp of course would be welcome as well as +5th, whammy divebombs... It could definitely fit in a Flyrig-sized device though!

They would make a killing. Fender could give it a go, or otherwise Tech21 as they've shown their prowess squeezing a complex chain into a small pedal with the dUg pedal. But it's the octave up that makes or breaks it and you'd really need EHX for that bit!

Octave, filter, bitcrusher all in one pedal, anyone?

On your marks!

If you haven't tried already, give it a go with yours, keep the lows clean and compressed, send the highs to the rest of the chain then somehow mix them together at the end!

If you were looking at the Warwick Alien, check out the Godin A5 Ultra. I have the A4 and love it, Bass Direct have a used A5 for sale too: http://bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Godin_A5.html Well worth getting the Ultra version for the extra magnetic pickup, it sounds middy and growly like a fretless 'Ray. Older ones are piezo only. Demo of the A4:

If comparing the two it really comes down to which FX you need. Helix doesn't have a lot of bass drives on offer but you can put a crossover anywhere in the chain and a compressor on your lows for example, so there's a lot of mileage to be had from the guitar drives. The Zoom has some very good filters in it too, plus some more specialist bass drives (BB Preamp, Bass Muff, Blueberry, Sansamp BDDI etc). Then there's the amp models of course - I've not tried the B3n but I'd like to, as I didn't find an amp model in the full fat Helix that I preferred over my analog preamp pedals (VT Bass, Tonehammer etc). I have been tempted to pick up a HX though! The analog delay modelling is amazing, sounds just like my Carbon Copy when pushing it into crazy noise making territory. Plus being able to put a crossover in at 200Hz, compress the lows and only apply FX (including physical pedals) to the highs has become something I'm very interested in since owning the dUg pedal.

Heavy alt rock, goth burlesque frontwoman with tats and panda eye shadow. Makes me think of Evanescence.

TIs are quite middy, but not overly bright. I'm also a fan of Pyramid Gold, similar in sound and feel but with a bit more tension and more low end thud. Both TIs and Pyramids are nickel flats whereas most others are steel as far as I know. I think this makes them smoother both in terms of touch and tone. LaBellas and Chromes for example are a lot brighter sounding and stickier to the touch when new, although they get smoother once worn in. I have some GHS Precision Flats ready to try out next on my P though!

Anyone interested in recreating a dUg style signal chain but with other pedals, you could do a lot worse than to pick this up. It's a dual band compressor that had separate outputs for the high and low bands. So send your highs to a distorted guitar amp for example, or into a distortion pedal then blend back together with the lows with an LS-2 or such. You can also pull off a similar sound with a Helix HX. I was fooling around with the crossovers, compressors, EQs and a Rat model and wasn't far off! Still preferred the dUg though and wasn't prepared to spend hours tweaking it to get there!

Serial looks to be visible on the neck plate, I don't suppose you know what yours was?

You might have had an active buffer stage before it perhaps? Wooly Mammoths lose all their low end if you use an active bass or another pedal going into it, they're designed to be used hooked up directly to passive pickups. There have been clones made with impedance matching circuitry on the front end but they aren't that common.

I've got TIs on mine, they're perfect on that bass. They are relatively expensive but you only have to buy them once - I've had a set on my P Bass for nearly 10 years!