dannybuoy

I've always thought something doesn't quite add up with these cabs. If the higher value is 12 ohms, that suggest the speakers are 6 ohms each, which results in 3 ohms when wired in parallel. That's all fine and dandy if your 4-ohm capable amp is actually pretty happy at 3 ohms. But then if you add a second cab you have 1.5 ohms, which might be pushing your luck when it comes to 2-ohm capable amps, no? Since my amp is ok at 2 ohms, I'd be happy with a pair of 4-ohm cabs, and carry a serial wiring cable in case I ever ended up rig sharing and someone wanted to use their 4-ohm capable amp with my cabs (which would give them a 8 ohm load, or 6 depending on if the above were true or not!).

The Spectracomp does indeed look good, great price and unparalleled flexibility. I do prefer hands on control though and find any pedal that needs an app a bit of a faff, but on the other side once I have something dialled in I tend to leave it there, and then there's fewer knobs to nudge accidentally!

In vein of similar thread titles... I was very happy with the RMI Basswitch Dual Band until it died last night. No noticeable pumping, just a very natural sound, the dual bands working well to keep control when playing aggressively. Word of warning is that it needs isolated power due to the internal charge pump producing some high pitched hum in other pedals if using on a daisy chain. Only got it a couple of weeks ago so hopefully no problems returning it to Thomann, they are usually very good. I have an Effectrode PC-2A tube comp as well, which sounds like a vintage tube preamp and adds a big pillow of low end fatness with absolutely zero noise. It works really well on my fretless but isn't what I'm looking for as my main compressor as my main bass has more than enough low end already. I'll just keep this one around for recording I reckon. Since I would have to wait a while for a replacement and I have rehearsal tomorrow, I just threw caution to the wind and ordered a Cali76 Compact Bass. I like the idea of the LPF and blend to stop it clamping down so much on the low end, which was the main reason I went for the dual band in the first place. Also the comments that it tightens the lows and makes everything sound more hi-fi sounds like a good fit for my Yamaha BB1025X, which has tons of lows but is quite dark sounding. The RMI had the same effect and really helped to even out the balance between lows and highs.

Pretty sure you can save 3 individual presets (which each have tons of parameters), one to each position of the switch. If you keep your patches simple, i.e. one distortion model at a time, you can even assign different presets to the left and right channels and use a simple A/B box on the output to give you 6 presets. You can also hook up a Tech21 MIDI Mouse (there's one in the classifieds) and a Source Audio MIDI Hub (which I'm going to be selling soon!) to give you 99 presets or thereabouts! I couldn't quite cop the B3K with mine though, and forget about getting the sound of the VT Bass. The Aftershock would be a downgrade in my opinion, but worth checking out if your main motivation is saving cash and board space!

That only works with a passive volume pedal though, I don't think it would work with an active buffered one like this!

I'm not sure this pedal would be compatible with most expression jacks... rather than taking the voltage supplied by the pedal and feeding it back to the same TRS jack, it supplies it's own voltage to a TS jack, making it a CV pedal. The Dunlop DVP pedals take some beating though. Best action I've felt in an expression/volume pedal, and I only have the mini one!

I tried the original Billy Sheehan... I reckon it might have been my email to them complaining how the clean and dirt sides were out of phase that made them release the Deluxe!

I've tried that in the past wirh SFX X&M but didn't like the results I was getting at the time, mainly because the dirt reacted so differently without any low frequencies going into it, and the different dynamics from having dirt on one side but not the other. It would be interesting to try again though several years later! I'd been neglecting the Two Notes lately due to doing a lot of headphone practice (even with the band) where I preferred the VT or B7K due to their speaker sim / filtering. But adding the OmniCabSim after the Two Notes sounds incredible, I'll just need to see how it compares when played through my rig!

Current generation Super Compact I suppose. But hey, why not post them all!

Alex, I'd love to see a frequency response plot of say a Two10 vs a Compact, do you have any that you can share?

I think the point he was making is that speaker size is not as important as the voicing of the cab, and if you are looking at the flat full range type of 2x10 from other manufacturers, you would get a more apples-to-apples comparison by looking at the BB2 than the Two10.

A lot of people say TIs are floppy but maybe they are just used to higher tension flats. To me they are perfect and feel similar in tension to a typical set of rounds. I've even used a low B on a Fender P5 and it was superb. What kind of bass will you be fitting them to, Al?

TI flats on a P Bass, job done!

[quote name='Osiris' timestamp='1506808702' post='3381320'] Likewise, I love the VT bass sound(s) but I found them to be way too compressed out of the box (and I like a healthy dose of compression), certainly too squashed to use in a band situation. Are you sure adding in more compression is the right thing to do??? [/quote] I know what you mean, but if I just wanted to blend clean bass in, the VT500 / VTDI have a blend knob already. But it sounds much better putting the 'clean' side through this Effectrode unit - it's an unusual compressor in that as well as having a tube in to fatten things up, at low compression levels it adds low end, so perfect for using as a 'deep' channel! I think a low gain BDDI in parallel with a higher gain VT would work really well too, closer in concept to the Geddy pre I guess. I'll have another go with the Two Notes into the OmniCabSim too.

Someone on Talkbass just posted a demo of the new Mooer Tender MkII and it sounds pretty good too! The MkI is awesome.

Fender Rumble or Ashdown gets my vote. Decently priced and usable overdrive too.

[quote name='sifi2112' timestamp='1506764454' post='3380937'] so far I'm looking liking it , so much so my M900 might appear in FS soon lol [/quote] Haha, snap! My trusty Orange Terror Bass actually performs very well as a power amp and if my tone shaping is all on the board including a B3K I may not need the M900 either...

[quote name='Cuzzie' timestamp='1506761373' post='3380907'] Do you reckon you could get close with your Two Notes? I am watching eagerly for myself as i May experiment... [/quote] The Two Notes does do a similar sound out of the box, but I don't like its speaker sim or the fact it only applies to the XLR output. The VT has a much nicer top end roll off. I'll have to compare both setups later!

Not looking at bi-amping, but my needs mean I could use a cheaper v1 VT Bass and then run the blended channels to a Radial JDI or something.

[quote name='ead' timestamp='1506720026' post='3380746'] My first was a Yamaha RB270F (£90 iirc). Kept it for years. [/quote] These are great. My first ever bass and still have it!

Anyone ever try this or use it as their core sound? I’m a big fan of the VT Bass sound but always felt it overcompressed the low end and took away the thump of the note at medium drive levels. At least it does with my BB1025X, which has hot bassy pickups in it which only exacerbate this. The blend feature found on the DI and head versions remedies this somewhat, but it didn’t sound very fat just blending in a dry bass tone. So, inspired by the Tech21 Geddy preamp and Dug amp which blend two parallel chains, I tried a little experiment this evening. I split my signal to run through my Effectrode PC-2A compressor (which has a real fat thumpy low end for my ‘deep’ channel) and VT500 preamp section in parallel, then into the input and fx return of my Mosquite Blender to adjust the balance (which handily has a phase invert switch to counteract the polarity flip of the PC-2A), and finally into a PJB Bighead. Bloomin’ eck! One of the best bass sounds I have ever got into my headphones. So if anyone has a v1 VT Bass, BDDI, Oxford or Joyo Orange Juice for sale let me know, I’d like to play around with some more combinations!

The little Ampeg Micro VR stack sounds great, and there is just such a rig in the classifieds. The cabs sound like an 810 with less low end. I have a pair of them and use them at home! A word of warning about the Micro VR stack though, it is designed to be able to be used with a pair of the matching cabs (which you would most likely need to get to gigging volume with only 100W), however it goes snap crackle and pop, sounding like it’s about to explode when you do so. That amp plus pretty much any other pair of 8 ohm cabs is fine, or these cabs with any other amp is also fine. Probably just tolerances and the cabs a slightly lower impedance than labelled compared to other cabs.

Over the pond the Subway D800 is reasonably priced, but over a grand here.

[quote name='Bigwan' timestamp='1506687602' post='3380430'] Amp-wise (looking at Thomann as a quick example) Ampeg, EBS, Markbass, Ashdown, Hartke, GK, Tech 21, Fender, TC and Warwick can all do a 500w bass head in the £500 region, some [u][i][b]significantly[/b][/i][/u] below. What makes the M500 so special that I should buy it at a premium? While I liked the M900 I had quite a lot (and the Vintage Ultra I'e just sold), there's no doubt that in the value for money stakes Darkglass are in danger of disappearing up their own bottoms. [/quote] Quite, but I find all this vitriol rather odd when there are no similar threads ripping into Aguilar, Mesa, Glockenklang, Vanderkley etc, whose amps cost even more?

I gotta disagree about the "yesterday's sound" thing too. Just because the pedal/pre is capable of full on distortion doesn't mean you have to use it that way - I for one use the B3K mode on the amp set to minimum gain, where it sounds clean unless I dig in. The baked in EQ curve of this mode has a mid scoop that's in just the right place so that it slots into a busy mix perfectly with distorted guitars, and unlike a lot of drive circuits they only distort the midrange, leaving the bottom end clear and uncompressed. They produce a great sound for direct recording, even without a cab sim. But those prices are getting out of control!