dannybuoy

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.

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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!

I still drop tune my E to D on my 5 string when the song calls for it. If there's a lot of pedalling of the low D going on it sounds much better on the open string and also some D-based riffs are very tricky to play in BEADG tuning. Try Slither by Velvet Revolver for example! If you play that without dropping to D, in between the next track the band members and audience will look round at what the hold up is from their bass player, as he had to stop and shake the cramp out of his wrist!

I've not been a fan of any of the VM/TM series based purely on demos I've heard, I always felt the MM pickup was too far south from its natural habitat and it didn't blend well with the P. I'd have to try one out for myself though! I was always interested in the single pickup Basic model though as a slim necked Stingray alternative: I picked up a Sandberg Basic from here for an absolute bargain and it's the best sounding bass I've ever had. Just plugged straight into any amp it sounds great even in passive mode, whereas with other basses, I've had I've always been trying different pedals and preamps to make them sound good!

BB735A review: https://www.bassgearmag.com/yamaha-bb735a-bass-guitar/

I couldn't get the Mastotron to work for me, seemed very tricky to dial in. I have a Malekko Unity that has the same issue, heard some amazing sounds out of it just not from me! The Diabolik on the other hand was dead easy to get a good gated synth fuzz tone out of.

The Manta's waveforms are all LFOs, AKA Low Frequency Oscillators, essentially a control signal to modulate, AKA wobble, your signal. Synths feature LFOs too but they use higher frequency oscillators - sine, square, sawtooth, etc shaped waves to produce the basis of the entire sound. A sine is a pure note, different shapes have more harmonic content going on. If you were to add together hundreds of different sine waves of just the right frequencies, you could make the overall waveform look like a square or triangle. That's why a sawtooth waveform sounds much harsher, and also the reason why fuzz sounds like it does - turning your standard sine wave into a square wave, your ear picks up all of these different frequencies that weren't there before.

There are two settings with getting it for IMHO, and they are +5th / -4th (for making power chords above and below the root) and +Oct / +5th (for taking a power chord and bending it up to the octave). Molten Voltage (as well as another I can't recall) produce some add-on devices that let you get the full range of possible harmonies out of either pedal though.

This app used to be £35 but is now free. I actually paid for it a while back as I found the sound quality of the time stretching to be superior to the other options I tried at the time. Worth checking out if you need to slow down tunes to learn them anyway! https://pro.riffstation.com/download/

I’ve got both. If there is a difference in tracking it is very slight, I can’t really tell the difference. I only got the V to try some of the extra harmony options but it’s surplus to requirements now and it’s in my to-sell queue if you’re at all interested!

We already have one! But most of the picture links are dead now.

Lots of octavers fare surprisingly well near the end of the chain, and many people have never even bothered to try it after other fx due to having it drummed into them that octavers have to come first. I don't like feeding octave into most dirt pedals or compressors, but they do kick donkey into a filter. Best way around the whole situation IMHO is a filter with an FX loop so that it can react to your raw bass tone but blend it in at the very end of the chain. I see the COG T65 has an fx loop but it isn't clear how its wired up, e.g. if it applies the loop to the clean or sub octave?

Well I've disowned the clean channel completely, with my setup there's no way I can get it to sound good with flicking between them. Mainly because the dirt is so bright I have to cut the treble - but for a clean sound I want the opposite and could use a treble boost. It's far less of compromise to have bypass as my 'clean channel'!