dannybuoy

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!

Gave Helix Native another trial run today! Managed to get a reasonable approximation of my Tech21 DP-3X in a short amount of time. I used a crossover block with a compressor on the lows, the highs going to an extra high-pass followed by various distortions/amps, then a low-pass filter. Tried the OC-2 trick with the Pitch Ring Mod, not bad, with a bit more tweaking you could definitely get a useable solo synth sound from it. And holy moly did they get the analog delays going into self oscillation right! That would be a lot of fun mapped to an expression pedal.

I thought the same, every amp pushed well beyond usable saturation. Wasn't sure if it was my input level or just the way it is including on the hardware unit!

Acme do cabs that go down to -6 dB at 31 Hz. They need a LOT of power to drive though. With bass cabs, you can get them to go deep, be small, or be loud... pick any two! Al, get some 18" subs for your next gig, get Cuzzie to lend you his Beefbag and we'll all turn up to experience the true meaning of heft. Of course nobody will be able to hear the other instruments or even focus their vision due to their retinas vibrating, but they are but minor drawbacks to an otherwise excellent plan.

I ddin't eevn sopt the tpyo, it's an aiamnzg fcat taht as lnog as the frist and lsat ltretes are crorcet, we can raed pterty mcuh aynhtnig!

Judging by the OP's avatar, perhaps they are being paired with a Thunderbird though? I've only ever put Flexsteels on a T-Bird, they sound balanced there since the pickups are so dark as it is. The Epi T-Bird I have for sale is wearing a set in fact!

Nobody is arguing against you there, sounds like you have got the wrong end of a very pointy stick that is tightly wedged up your bum! The argument being made was that with a complex sound like a bass or piano, or don't need the fundamental to be able to judge the pitch, in fact if you have a decent enough brain it will fill in the low fundamental so that you will hear it when it isn't there. Which is why you can still pick out a bassline from a tune being played back on a mobile phone speaker. Not only that but many amps will chop off that content too - the M900 has a HPF built in for example, although I don't know what it's specs are!

Work out who's the best whistler in the band and give them a mic! Even if it's a bit wonky I would rather hear it attempted at a live gig than someone play back a sample. Or you could give it a bash with a theremin? Or Digitech Jamman with the sample saved on an SD card if you must use a sample!

The chord detection is pretty nifty too, it doesn't get it bang on all the time but it's certainly useful if making up basslines to know what you're playing against!

Al, you've spent the last 6 months raving about high pass filters, now you want to evacuate everyone's bowels by reproducing notes at 20Hz. Get a grip man! Psycho-acoustics is a complex field, your piano test doesn't quite take all factors into account. You could roll off everything under 100Hz and still be able to tell the difference between the low E on your bass and 7th fret on the A string. Your brain knows what a bass guitar or piano sound like and the typical ratios between the various harmonics that give it it's unique timbre, so it's very good at detecting the difference between two notes an octave apart when the fundamental is chopped off. However where it gets interesting though is that musician's brains are better at this than the general population - with enough low end rolled off, some people might perceive a step from 7th fret on the A string to 1st fret on the E string as a step up in pitch rather than a step down. The Wikipedia link posted earlier goes into this.

I don't look at knobs, I just feel them. Wait, that sounded wrong. Most bass knobs have no markers on them, so I just give them a quick twiddle to see how far they are from the end of travel or the center detent if there is one. Wouldn't want to be picking up my bass and holding it up to my face squinting!

Dunlop Super Brights are even more flexible if that's what you're after. What gauge do you use, I've have an unopened pack of Flexsteels I could sell!

The pickup is indeed a bit further north than a Ray, plus I've got flats on it, which results in a mellower sound. It was the Vulfpeck 'It Gets Funkier' vid that drove me to find a bass with that sound, and that's what exactly I got! David Caraccio from the video above has a custom gold Basic also with the MM pup in what looks like the actual Stingray position plus an added J pickup really close to the bridge!

But you probably don't even hear much below 40Hz. You might feel it more than anything. If you chop off the fundamental, your brain hears the higher harmonics e.g. 80Hz and 160Hz, realises what's going on and you hear the bass when it's not there. Thankfully this explains it better than I could!