ped

Here's a little sample. All my usual excuses for playing and recoding skill - but hopefully you can hear the sound of the bass. Just my bass into the interface and Garageband with a backing track. I've only just worked out how to do fade ins, so I have a lot to learn still. I can never seem to get the levels sounding right after exporting!

There's a Facebook group where occasionally some come up for sale, or where you can intimidate current owners into giving theirs up.

Bass Direct have a good range 👍🏼

When lockdown ends you’d be more then welcome to try it

Even though I’ve had this bass for a few months now, I’ve only really had time to properly appreciate it recently. I have spent the last couple of days playing it and playing with the dip switches and various compressors. It’s just a fantastic instrument. So sleek and smooth in the hand and the sound is best described as ‘delicious’ Ive taken some pics using the fake depth of field effect on my phone which sometimes works ok but often causes glitches. There’s been very little natural light today anyway so I might get some better ones tomorrow. I’m working out my recording setup and plan to get some samples up soon. Super sexy take on the jazz shape, thinner and a bit smaller. The neck is the best bit - dead flat, impeccable fretwork. I like the font! String through body and battery box. Dip switches inside cover which is awkward but set-and-forget. Angled neck heel and threaded inserts. She has a few dents and marks but black hides them well!

Looks great, exactly what I'm planning to do. Backbeat missed a trick by not offering these cables as an upgrade!

For your female extension did you get an unbalanced cable or a stereo one?

Looks great - have you tried feeding the stage mix into the input via the receiver? I had to put my backbeat in charge last night for the first time - it’s lasted ages! Decided to put it on my comfort strapp because it’s easier to get on and off the bass with the Dunlop locks.

I’m not sure bumping the tread is really that useful - it’s highly unlikely that someone would see this before entering dealings with Mason, more likely they’ll find it after they search for him. Hopefully there will be some updates from the police/action fraud soon? Anyone heard anything?

Gonna need pics of that! Locking female Jack sounds like a good idea. I might copy. And the hair band! I was thinking about heat shrinking the cables together to keep it neat.

Tempted to try a boss wl20 from the output to my rig actually 🤔

I’ve got some custom cables coming which will make it easier to plug in my bass and outgoing device in when wearing the strap. One is basically a patch lead to reach the instrument output and the other is a female Jack extender so I can easily connect my backbeat output to my amp or whatever is next in the chain. It can be a bit of a tangle otherwise as you need to connect it all up before putting the strap on.

Just to mention that for the ultimate headphone experience, try adding a physical feedback device to your signal, such as a Backbeat or a bass board. You can then feel the bass and hear it perfectly reproduced in your headphones. I don’t think you’ll look back at using an amp again and having the ‘feel’ of the bass allows you to have a lower headphone volume too.

Hi folks OK well I managed to spend most of the afternoon on Sunday giving this pedal a try. Fred slept for a mammoth 3 hours and only woke up when I stopped playing, which probably says something. Right - the bass I tend to use compression with most carefully is my Celinder jazz. I want the Marcus Miller slap sound but with a warm undercurrent without harsh peaks. My other basses tend to have fairly light compression. I set a high threshold, keeping my dynamics intact, and when the threshold is crossed I have around a 3:1 ratio and zero attack and fast release. This sounds, to me, like a more natural 'limiter' which helps my sound lower into the mix, giving it a definitive 'bottom' without it sounding squished or breathy. On my P bass I have a limiter which turns any peaks into nice growly overtones - with flats the sound is quite dynamic and I tend to prefer that with a P bass so that pops on the G stand out more. I also have a higher action on that bass so I want it to sound like I'm working harder with it, rather than the smooth hifi zing of the others, with the Stingray being somewhere in between. So I chose the Jazz bass as the one to test this pedal, and the one best suited to test it's limits because there is just so much juice on tap via the pre. First of all, the compressor on my Roland sounds, to my ears, perfect. There is the slightest amount of noise which you can hear through headphones if you switch the comp off and on - it's barely noticeable and you can in fact reduce that by reducing the gain and upping the level on the 'amp' but I'm talking ridiculous levels of scrutiny here. My first impression is that despite the review at http://www.ovnilab.com/reviews/optifet.shtml saying there is ZERO noise, there is. It's a bit less than the Carl Martin, but pressing 'engage' introduces a definite subtle, smooth sounding white noise. After playing with the gain settings and other levels besides I have managed to get it nearly as 'gone' as the Roland, but not quite. It was the same with isolated supply and battery. Of course I am splitting hairs here to a ridiculous degree through a very sensitive and detailed headphone setup - I'm sure at amplified levels it'll be untraceable. I'm sure the guy at Onvilab has a more rigorous and generally better way to test in absolute terms. I dug out my old LMB3 that I used for years and never once noticed any noise from and was amazed at how noisy it is, which shows that I have potentially become a bit obsessed with this and should probably move on. I started by mimicking the settings I already use (even though the ranges are completely different) and found that the sound was a little too squashed and pillowy. The trouble is that the threshold control is very sensitive and with an active bass you end up with it almost maxed unless you want to compress the whole signal. It was kicking in too early so I increased this to 7/8 of it's travel; and those last few mm make a huge difference. Thankfully the knobs have rubber washers under them making them tricky to turn by accident. in fact they give quite a bit of resistance which makes tiny adjustments much easier and will lock them in place. So now to the ratio. It ranges from 2.5 to infinity. 2.5 is quite a high ration already at the minimum so I was disorientated at first but it's intuitive and seems to do most of the work in the first half of the travel where 'soft knee' compression is applied. I found it difficult to get the right level here - sometimes sounding too strangled and then too punchy and unnatural. It's taken a lot of playing to get it to match which I want but after leaving it overnight and coming back today I am pleased to say I have found the right setting for this bass at least. It was the same with the Roland - and I'm sure we've al been there with adjusting anything - you end up going round in circles, your ears get used to the sound and you chase your tail! I always have a zero/fast attack setting because the compression only kicks in at a high threshold anyway, but I did find the range of this control very musical when I tried it with a lower threshold and a super trebly input for some 'effect' type compression (something the Roland doesn't do very well, I must say - not that I ever use it - I'm sure if I spent some time I could do a manageable version). Same with the release - zero again because of the high threshold. Once dialled in I am very pleased with the sound of the pedal. I say sound, because it does have it's own character as well as the compression it applies. This can be adjusted using internal dip switches to apply warmth 1/2/off and a 12khz cut. I have tried all the settings and found with the warmth on setting 1 it gave a very subtle but great sounding feel which at first I didn't notice until I played a looper into the pedal and adjusted the switch with the back off (can we have them on the side or under a sliding door plz?). Setting 2 was a bit too rounded for me and the 12khz cut is apparently useful for filtering out noise from pedals up the chain but I didn't have any use for that and I like my biting treble - I mean to try it with other basses through. Then there's the side chain. You can adjust the way the limiter works with three frequency bands, so for example if I want to compress the bass more I can turn that dial up or vice versa. It has a subtle effect but I will try to set this up to give some extra limiting to the high range for the 'compression as an effect' type thing I mentioned earlier which I had fun playing with. I haven't played with putting any effects in the loop yet. I haven't ever got on with two band compressors very well, partly because I have only tried a few, but this gives an interesting slant on the benefits of having one. I really like that the pedal takes a battery so I can grab it and go (always seems weird when pedal manufacturers make small pedals but then you need a chunky power supply - less problematic if you have a pedalboard I suppose). Will it replace the compressor in the VB99? no - but after a lot of twiddling I'm pretty sure this comes as close as I'll get in a more portable format. Finally the build quality is superb - rock solid, smooth finish and very high quality feel to the knobs especially with their dampened effect. Cheers ped

Unless other people need to hear you I’d never use an amplifier for home playing. Why not get a great headphone setup so you can play along with things and hear your bass like it’s on a record rather than reverberating things in the room. You don’t get the ‘clack’ from your instrument acoustically interfering with the bass sound either.

Looks great, I’ve always liked the look of these especially with the controls in a line like that. Is it 60s spacing? Congratulations, it must be deeply satisfying to find one after such a long search. Fingers crossed it arrives safely.

That’s a great collection and nice to have two of them for so long; they must feel’like home’ - I hope I can keep mine as long as that. They compliment each other really well hanging up like that. Not sure I’d get permission to do the same! Cheers ped

It controls you? 😆

One of my favourite things about my Roland VB99 is the selection of compressors built in. They’re (mostly) transparent, effective and most of all silent. They really are everything I could need and offer lots of adjustment not normally found in a pedal or rack format and also it’s great to save a setting for each bass. Trouble is that the Roland isn’t that portable especially considering it’s plunked into my home setup so centrally with all the cables etc hidden, so I’ve usually had a compressor pedal to take when going to a practice or jam. I’ve been using a Carl Martin Compressor/Limiter for a while and recently got another with the built in plug as usually it’s the only pedal I use. I really like them but have found that in the studio it does introduce a little noise and slight high roll off. Before that I used the Boss LMB3 which I thought was fantastic for the price. None of us are going out to play at the moment so I thought I’d get some new compressors to try at home in my unnecessarily strict test environment so I’m ready for the things I have booked in from the Spring. My main requirements: - Super quiet - High ratio/limiting - Battery option is a bonus - As transparent is possible at low ratio/high threshold with no tone loss Enter the FEA Opti-fet- I’ll give it a go on Monday, doubt I’ll get a chance before then. Sounds like a worthy competitor...

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