dannybuoy

They've apparently got plans for 5 string versions of the Cutlass & Caprice in 2018 according to a post I read on the main Talkbass thread about these basses.

His reply: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/new-damnation-audio-mbd-1-the-bass-distortion-ive-been-waiting-for.1247402/page-31#post-20351160

This is what you need rather than a lacklustre audio-to-MIDI converter: https://www.roland.com/us/products/gk-3b/

Analog octave up is possible but it is more of an octave up fuzz effect, just like the COG T65, Pearl Octaver, Foxrox Octron, etc. Useful for synth tones though!

Already did, he wasn't interested at the time.

They make their own pickups though, so could make them whatever size they wanted to... but even so, they could improve the P pup as-is by just moving the two halves a couple of mm closer to each other.

I've played a couple of these (one in Wunjos and another in Music Street in Huntingdon) and loved them. Especially the neck, which I found surprising since I thought I did not get on with vintage radius necks and preferred flatter boards.. until I played this.

Take one for the team and let us know how it compares to the more expensive competition!

If this one is any good for £58 then we may have a contender! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOtTEvqu06g

I would've bought that Damnation Audio pedal a long time ago if it wasn't so unnecessarily big! Does sound great though, there are other demos out there... I find a lot of Excane's demos sound similar to each other and rather different to my experience playing through the same pedals - e.g. he makes the HGBM sound like a high gain monster distortion whereas I found it more of a mellow overdrive.

Their first pedal was a clean one!

Bandcamp offer downloads in FLAC which is a lossless CD-quality format... so download that and burn it onto one of those ancient disc thingies, and Bob's your uncle!

How anyone can offer an opinion about the pedal when it's not out yet and we've only heard 5 seconds of a crappy Instagram clip is beyond me!

The editor is up there with TC in terms of what you can control... I just couldn't find a light drive sound in there that could top my analog overdrive pedals.

Aftershock - some awesome heavy fuzz sounds (especially as a result of blending two modes in parallel) but all of the lighter overdrive sounds and the Darkglass clone models were mediocre in my book.

I'd avoid the CTM15. Yes it has a gain control which the 30 doesn't have, but the trouble is it's useless - it seems to be a treble boost rather than a volume boost! You can turn it up a smidge but anything higher just results in a really bright sound, and the EQ knobs don't do enough to counteract it. It does sound good with the gain low and master up high, but that's louder than most would be able to get away with playing at home. I'd recommend a VT Bass pedal or VT500 amp, or some kind of modeller if you want that tube grind at low volume levels or in headphones.

My block version is true bypass, I expect the older ones aren’t but I bought mine new about 3 years ago. Check reviews first, I’m sure I read one somewhere that said this pedal wasn’t as good as expected for some reason... Original sounds better to me here, somewhat thicker and warmer: (read comment by bumble yeti on this vid who agrees)

Chowny sounded the best there, but I'm sure the others would have shone more with different settings. As an owner of the FEA I know it can sound a lot better than that!

Lots of bassists use the MXR Analog Chorus or the Zak Wylde version too, since it has the same lo and hi filters as the Boss CE-5, which let you roll off the high end from your dry signal and the low end from the chorus signal. Just try as many as you can, most guitar shops have tons of them and you don’t need a bass specific one as even some of the guitar oriented ones mentioned above have bass friendly features.

Surprised you’re getting low end loss with the Two Notes, but then again I only ever ran mine in Cold Fusion mode, where blending in a bit of Channel A can give you all the low end you’ll ever need and then some!

Dunlop Super Brights!

Testing out the MP3 upload feature of the new site... This is a recording I did a while back of the BB1025X into the Cali Compact Bass into the M900 amp on B3K mode, with a bit of Phase 90 then Blower Box added at the end (it's a bit long so just fast forward!). Preamp out from the M900 into the PJB Bighead which I used as a USB recording interface. Will do a brief clip of how this sounds in a mix, and another of the P-Bass + Tonehammer at some point... ATM.mp3

@CRV, sounds like what you are describing is the EQ being before the gain / clipping stage. Easy to tell if this is the case by boosting the bass to see if it results in more distortion or not. I think the DHA has all the EQ post-distortion - which I prefer since you can boost the low end without overly bloating the distortion, and use the treble control to reign in the high frequency content generated by the clipping. As a different example, the SFT and Earthquaker Monarch have their EQ before the clipping. The Tonehammer as far as I can tell has the mids before clipping, and the bass/treble afterwards (which I think is the best all round approach!).

I keep the gain fairly low on the Blower Box too, it sounds shite otherwise! I like the Vintage, but not as much as the B3K/B7K circuit for my current sound. I'm using a BB1025X with both pickups on, which results in a scooped sound like a Jazz bass. Something about that bass combined with the B3K/B7K makes it slot right into the mix like a glove with barely any EQ adjustments. I find I have to tweak the EQ quite a bit if I flip the amp over to Vintage mode. Both Darkglass drives though have a similar characteristic where they let the low end through clean and uncompressed, just distorting the mids. Kind of like a solid state clean bass amp mixed in parallel with a distorted guitar amp. This works great for aggressive or dynamic playing styles, but sometimes you want the full range of the signal to be compressed and driven, making a sound like an old cranked amp pushing a speaker to its limits. That's what pedals like the Tonehammer and Bearfoot Blueberry do so well, it works great for more mellow slower numbers. The M900 amp can't really do that tone alone, but you can flip the Microtubes engine off and you have a clean transparent amp that you can then dirty up with one of the aforementioned units. Also have to give a shout to the Pike Vulcan - it's like a less scooped B3K and brighter more agressive Vintage crammed into a single box, with a blend knob between both sounds. In short it can approximate both the main Darkglass sounds and costs less than either one of them!

So in an attempt to answer the question 'if you could only choose one', the answer is 'it depends'... on which music style, bass and amp. If I'm playing classic rock / blues / R&B with my P Bass and flats, hands down the Aguilar Tonehammer for the warm wooly overdrive it gets with the AGS on. On the other hand, if I had a Tonehammer amp at my disposal (which I would probably buy if I had the need to play this stuff out more since it has a variable AGS control AKA the 'Drive' control) then I wouldn't need a pedal at all, but I would have fun working out which one paired the best with that setup (a journey I have not gone on yet). If I'm playing more modern rock with my Yamaha BB1025X and rounds, the B7K sound of the M900 amp is my core tone. So if I had no amp, or just a clean amp at my disposal, the B7K Ultra would be my one pedal. On the other hand, since I have an M900 for the core sound, that leaves a spot for another dirtbox... On the board I have a SolidgoldFX Beta for a warm vintage sound, an IdiotBox Blower Box for more aggression, and an EHX Russian Muff for full on sustain. If I could only take one though it would probably be the Blower Box.