uk_lefty

Looking for opinions here... I used to use my Ashdown Rootmaster with the compression always on at around 12 o'clock. Compression-wise it wasn't doing much but what I noticed more than anything was a big volume boost. I traded up to an ABM 600 which is a beautiful amp for the EQ and drive. But the compressor.... It doesn't seem to do much at all except make everything a lot quieter. Am I doing it wrong? Is anyone happily using the ABM compressor? Why would the Rootmaster compressor be a big volume boost and the ABM be a huge volume cut?

The Zoom is going back to Thomann! While it's a perfectly acceptable little thing and world's beyond the old BFX708 I had many years back it's just not doing enough in my set up. The Darkglass really put things into perspective for me, and if cashflow were a little better I'd be buying a Darkglass preamp/ drive pedal. As it is I've gone for a second hand Fender Downtown Express. I've gone for that because I don't want to clutter my board but I think compression is a must at the start of my chain, the switchable EQ is a benefit particularly when I can go from a Stingray one gig to a Jack Casady the next, and the drive could be useful going into my ABM. I also like the simplicity of having it all out in front of me to tweak between the two or three settings I'll use.

I've been a Megadeth "appreciator" since discovering Youthanasia aged 13 and working my way through other albums as and when I could scrape the money together. The "new" sound of Megadeth from Dystopia and the latest album is not a return to Peace Sells or Rust in Peace. It just isn't. I don't think it's trying to be either. It's more in step with other big metal acts of the moment, it has commercial relevance I guess. It still has Mustaine's voice, lyrics and guitar style but the overall sound is more up to date. I'm ok with that. If I want to listen to Peace Sells I'll put that on. If I want to be disappointed by Megadeth I'll listen to their utterly pointless duet version of A Tout Le Monde with Christina Scabia. On the whole I'm not blown away by it, I'm not going to make it my favourite Megadeth album over Youthanasia or Rust in Peace, but I'm glad it exists and hope it does well.

Have already sent to the drummer/ sound-man in training and the guitarist who is an engineer and likes all this technical stuff. Thank you!

That's on the list! Along with the Fender Downtown Express, and maybe an EHX Battalion though I had one briefly in the past. Alternatively I could get a dedicated compressor and separate preamp. I'm trying to spend as little as possible though I do genuinely think the more you spend the more you get! It's a tough one.

Not sure really, it definitely could have been. We're spending four hours on Weds night getting our PA out, all our gigging gear and setting our levels and making sure we all know exactly what we are doing. The lads only used the PA system once or twice before I joined and they're still learning more and more about it. The guitarist has in-ears now, a very expensive fancy set, and that helped because though we didn't have ambient mics he could hear conversations going on over near the bar! My hunch is the main issue was sound pinging around the room but if we know the PA gear inside out and all the little troubleshooting tips then we will be better at managing these things in future.

Saturday night, private party for a friend of the signer. Bringing our own PA gear except some speakers in situ. Sound issues all over, sadly. The room was small and there was some weird reverb on the bass notes. If I played a note that would usually go "dum" and end in this place it would go "dumMmMmmmmWhooooomph". Worse still notes below A caused a swelling mush of low end. The singer couldn't hear his monitor, and I usually rely on that monitor too. Still, nice crowd of people enjoying themselves and celebrating their friends birthday. Once more we had a request for a song I've never learned but the band had played years back before I joined, so I had to busk my way through... Made harder by the singers notes being chords for a guitar with a capo at the 2nd fret, quite hard to do on the fly! But we got through. Don't know about anyone else but if I make even small mistakes it haunts me forever. I don't know if the audience notices at all but it bothers me a lot. Plenty to work on in rehearsals this week!

So.... Played a private party on Saturday night. The sound on the venue was shocking. Honestly the worst venue. I can usually deal with not hearing my bass properly but still hearing the singers monitor, or the other way round, but this was truly awful. Any note below A produced a swelling mush. There was natural reverb in the room on the bass notes that was quite eerie, it sounded like an effect being applied. Anyhow, pedals verdict: Zoom B1.four. I used standard settings for amp Sims and compression. Jury is still out here. I need to either get into this pedal with my PC or return it quick. Part of this feeling is explained by... Darkglass Duality Fuzz. Woah. This is built for gigging. I never used fuzz much until this last year but it's become something I rely upon now. I love this pedal for how easy it is to use, how much variance there is to the sound off just four rotary dials, and how perfectly it sits in the mix. This explains where the money on good quality individual pedals goes when you compare to something like the Zoom. Even in comparison to my old Helix Stomp there's just something to the sound that's a smidge "better". Boss OC-2. Unfortunately with the sound so poor I couldn't really hear this as well as I would have liked to and only bothered to use it on one song. Next week's gig should have better sound so more chance to explore it then. So this leaves me with a small quandary on what to do with the Zoom. I feel like I need a compressor, my amps onboard compressor just doesn't do it for me. I'd like an overdrive of some sort, though I play through an ABM amp which has its valve drive and can turn the gain right down on the Darkglass if I want to. I would like a chorus but I'm not so bothered on that front right now. It would be handy though to have something that can go straight to PA if the amp fails or is forgotten or whatever, so a preamp/ DI type pedal would be useful but not essential. My marketplace, eBay and Reverb searches continue!

Double P basses 😍

Based on this, and all other courier rants, the whole thing just seems like a lottery!! Or Russian Roulette.

All couriers can be awful, I'm sure, but I have found the intermediary companies to be a completely false economy. They might get you a parcel cheaper but if you book through them you are f***ed if anything goes wrong. You can't contact the courier because you aren't the buyer of the service, the intermediary is, and if you contact the intermediary they have zero power or interest to help you AND will not refund you if the courier messes up and your parcel comes back months later looking like Mike Tyson set to work on it. They are a complete blocker to getting any sense out of anything and not worth the small discount they can give.

So my band are going bananas about getting the PA settings digitally set. It makes sense. But... The bass doesn't go through the PA today except for the drummer's monitor. Even so, I need to go to a very lengthy rehearsal to get all the levels set. Level setting apparently needs to also consider effects settings. As I am in the process of experimenting with my board some pedals will come and go. I've been looking at preamp pedals that have an fx loop. My very simple thinking is, loop all my effects into one preamp pedal (I'd like a preamp pedal with compressor) and then I can control output volume with the preamp pedal. Is this correct? Would it limit volume spikes off my fuzz etc? Or, is it behaving like an amp in that it only wants modulation etc in the loop and not drive and others? In which case the use I want it for is not carried out. I'm confused. Guitarist can't help me. Please help?!

Being a singer, especially for covers is very hard!! I tried it myself a few times and realised exactly how hard. It's not just remembering the queues the words and being in tune but getting the right emphasis on the right words and syllables... Hopefully the singer has taken your push in the right direction positively and recognises he had a decent band behind him. A band better than his current level of ability deserved.

No doubt I'll be back to multis in a year or two!

Last night the band worked on one new song (I say "new" it got requested at a gig once and we jammed it nicely) then worked on some details for other established songs. The verdict is in: Boss OC-2 hard to hear in the mix in a rehearsal room but I think its going to really bring something playing live through big PAs. Keeper. Duality Fuzz. This made everyone happy. I love how flexible it is to get a "soft" fuzz after the octave for a synthy sound or a full on modern tear your face off screaming fuzz and everything in between. In the mix it can act like a hairy overdrive too. Not just a keeper, an absolute winner. I'm glad I pushed the boat out for this, despite how much I wanted an EHX Bass Big Muff. Zoom B1 four.... Having used a Helix Stomp for about 18months I didn't expect this to be as good. It is nowhere near the quality of sound. I used some of the presets for compressor and EQ and it was.... Ok. Ok for rehearsals. I would not want to gig it with those tones. I need to get into tweaking this a LOT to get it gig worthy. I may still bite the bullet and buy a decent compressor, EQ, and chorus pedal. Also, I think this pedal is bringing noise into my signal chain. It could be that the power pack, which is a cheap unit anyway, is now being stretched a bit with nearly every 9v bank in use but there is a constant background hiss.

Have got halfway through the thread... I don't have time to edit the Zoom patches yet but will try to early next week. So far the presets sound ok, a bit of tweaking and I expect it will be much improved.

I recently started to feel it was pointless having a Helix Stomp when I was using lesstl than 1% of its capability. I was also complementing the Stomp with other external pedals to do what it could not for gigging purposes. My board was... Wireless receiver, Expression pedal and Boss SY-1 Synth, AMT bass Wah, Harley Benton tuner/ mute, Helix Stomp plus two button footswitch to change patches... I bought a Boss OC-2 just because... I will use it extensively for the glitchy synthy nature of it. You can get the octave down sound but it's the glitch that is the charm of the original. That was the moment I just thought "hang on, this is getting silly" So I sold the Helix. New pedals in: Boss OC-2, Zoom B1 four, Darkglass Duality Fuzz. Rationale... Well my band does "pop goes rock" and I have been trying to recreate some of the synth sounds that underpin a lot of songs. The Boss isn't perfect for this but I'm spending some time trying to learn it better. I also wanted an OC-2 and a fuzz to make other synthy sounds. I use fuzz as a distortion type effect to make some choruses heavier, with its dual use for synthy stuff I knew I needed a good one and after watching the Ian Allison demo of the Duality I was sold (via BC Marketplace!) This fuzz does everything!! So why the Zoom? Well... I use chorus occasionally. Not enough to justify buying a new chorus. I need a compressor because I'm not happy with the one built in on my amp and I want it at the front of my pedal chain. I want to be able to call up random effects and try them with the band without having to buy stuff. So far with the zoom... It's ok. It is NOT a Helix replacement but for someone like me who didn't have the time or patience to get the best out of the Helix it will do a job and do it well. It's also a good practice tool. Over time it may get replaced on my board by a good chorus, a compressor and maybe a preamp, but for now I'm going to see how it goes. I'm pretty happy with the set up now. Though some of the pedals I've not had long with they are coming out with the band tonight to work on details in some old songs and one or two new ones. Can't wait to hear these in the mix!!

My singer uses a radio mic and me and the guitarist are both wireless. If a gig is going well then the singer will be off through the crowd while he's singing. If the gig is going badly he might go for a wonder... I've seen that once, diving into someone's selfie... There's two songs where me and the guitarist might pop off the stage too. The guitarist likes to run through the crowd and so on whereas I just like to get a bit out front and dance around a little. I'm very wary of smashing someone's head accidentally with the end of my bass so tend to make sure I've got space. It's not contrived or pre agreed, I don't always bother myself in a lot of gigs. But if we're feeling it we will go for a wonder about.

My favourite compressor on the Helix seemed to be the LA Studio comp. Worked well with both active and passive basses, slightly better with active. I'm not a big compressor guy though, I used to rely on the one knob built in comp on my old Ashdown Rootmaster, soy compression needs, tastes and knowledge are at the basic end.

I'd love to try a Rick but absolutely no way at the prices they go for. No way in hell.

Tasty 1980 Rick I just noticed on eBay... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125433617786?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=lWesMlFOSri&sssrc=2349624&ssuid=XRJhsZSpS5O&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

That would be my ideal P bass. But I'd probably have to get a second hand Mexican one and have a pickguard made! I'm already at too many basses, but a P would be very welcome in the fold right now!

It was a coin toss between that and Risky Business. Can you see the inspiration here? Unfortunately the band never really got going and since then I've sold my fretless Warwick and headless Status/ Washburn. One day.... One day....

And a custom shop P too. I do like both of them... About £4k ish new. Looks like a good deal for someone.