Al Krow

I think the general consensus is that Helix's weak spot is how it stacks up against dedicated synth pedals and to not quite the same extent dedicated filter pedals. As mentioned previously in relation to synth, that is in significant part due to not having a synth waveform generator on board which dedicated synth pedals such as the FI and C4 have, or indeed the Boss SY-1000 and Mooer GE300 Multifx's have - but both the latter are a fair bit more pricey than the HX Effects and rarely come up used. Helix is a synth simulator like many of the cheaper "synth" pedals e.g. the EHX Bass Mono Synth and whilst the Boss SY-1 is also synth sim, it has outrageously good polyphonic tracking and twin filters on board that give it a very good range of sounds. But you're obviously paying an extra £175 to £300 for one of the three higher end dedicated synth pedals (SY-1, C4 and FI) so you'd hope they might bring something extra to the party! Drive, modulation (including phase, chorus, flange and delay), limiting / compression (with the advent of the Rochester comp), pitch shifting (including octave up and down), EQ, tuner are all things Helix does very well IMO. That's a big chunk of many pedal boards.

😂😂😂

Great post - and I think @dave_bass5 does the same with his band in terms of technical rehearsals. It's definitely a nice thing to do if your bands are up for it and can make the time. Given the busy lives (young families and busy jobs) some of the band members have in my two bands we tend to focus our limited rehearsal time on getting our sets tight musically in terms of song structures, vocal harmonies, and vibe and feel of the songs but you're right there is absolutely no reason in a 3 hour rehearsal not to ask bandmates to have a listen to some of the tonal aspects - however with ear plugs in and a very capable drummer in a not vast rehearsal space, nuances tend to be lost.

So circa 200 flawless gigs (well maybe not all of the playing all of the time 😁) from just two of you with the TC RH 450 - good to hear!

Glad to hear. I think the points have been well and clearly made on both sides of the argument now. Interested in who's had a look at update 3.0 in any detail and are there any other patches to recommend checking out, other than the polyphonic pitch shifting?

Yup, thanks. It was just in their very first articles where they missed it and were more downbeat as mentioned by a couple of others. I'll go back and update my earlier post as it is clearly now out of date. The reason why the world will be particularly excited about the Oxford AZ vaccine and more so than the German and US ones is twofold: 1. PRICE - the Oxford one is a fraction of the cost and is being made available at cost, whereas the others are looking to make substantial profits on theirs. The Oxford vaccine can therefore be much more easily afforded by developing nations. 2. STORAGE TEMP - is much higher for the Oxford vaccine. Distribution will be much easier to all parts of the globe.

+1 ^^ And if you ever can't find Luke's post down the line, I put that Dr Tone link on the OP a while back. He's pretty well rated by Helix users. (Although I have no idea whether he uses any of his patches in a band context 😁)

Well if you are in awe then please stop trying to put down other folks' expression of praise as jingoism at every opportunity. What the Oxford / AZ team have just done is amazing.

Yup, as I said, some of us clearly find it hard to say "well done" when it's thoroughly deserved!

It is amazing work. Not only are they making it available on a not for profit basis to developing nations forever, but also to ALL nations (obviously including our own) on a not for profit basis until the pandemic is over. £3 / dose and normal fridge temperatures as we've mentioned above. This is actually the vaccine that the whole world has been waiting for. I really do hope the key members of the Oxford / AZ team are jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for their research: it would be entirely fitting. I know we all too often hate blowing our own trumpet: but bloody well done team GB!!!

Paul, out of interest, how many gigs would you say you did with no issues (and in fact a great result!) from your TC RH450?

Lol - "Isn't that the point of effects?" There you go again - that same mindset. Nope it absolutely isn't necessarily the point of effects. There are LOADS of effects users who enjoy just using them at home for creative sonic fun. And there are loads of bass players who are happy to play live without using any effects. I probably play 5 to 8 times as much at home as I do live with my bands (in a normal year, of course) - that's just me. My home gear context is equally, if not more important, to me as when playing with my two bands. Others will play entirely at home. Whilst plenty folk will be primarily focussed on how they sound with their bands. It's all valid bass playing and how and where we use our gear is up to us and frankly should be no one else's business. As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm just challenging the thinking that says band use is somehow superior to a "bedroom bassist"'s use of their gear at home and the band is the only valid place where gear should be evaluated. We see it all the time when folk say "yeah, yeah...BUT you haven't tried it in mix" as if to imply that their fellow BC'ers opinion is not valid until that hurdle has been jumped.

A little bit of presence One of the features of Markbass cabs is their tendency to roll off the high end and the old LM2/3 heads have a huge gap between their high mid centre EQ of 800Hz and their treble centre EQ of 10kHz, so there's not much you can do to sort that out with them (the newer ranges have much better EQ centre points). Having got myself a used MB Combo for home practice, with an LM2 head, I found that pairing it with my Tech 21 VTDI was a marriage made in heaven with the "bite" always on. This is a "presence" switch which boosts high-mids and usable treble and has an HPF to tighten up the low end. I recently spotted that the Berg Forte has a presence switch which they stated boosts the treble by 6DB at 6.5KHz - which was a very useful bit of info and I thought I'd therefore have a go at a DIY "presence" patch on my B1-4. Using two BassPEQ sims centred at 1.6kHz (high mids) and 6.3kHz (treble) with Q at 3 for both and gain (boost) at +12/20. Followed by Low EQ (HPF) sim and ZNR (noise reduction), seems to work a treat. Sadly given that uses 4 out 5 available blocks it can't be an "always on feature" on the Zoom if you want to engage other effects which require more than a single block - but will be very handy for brightening up a MB Combo with my spare B1-4 when I don't want get the full pedal board out!

Nope I'm not and I'm happy for the thread to wander where it will; makes for a more interesting conversation! It's complete bollox to say that the corruption experienced endemically by the whole population of the nuclear armed, space capable, Indian sub continent where my family hails from is driven by outside countries. I wish that the blame could so easily be laid elsewhere! I appreciate your statement may be true for smaller countries where the leadership is not democratically elected and / or can more easily be bought and you may well have the more relevant personal experience on that score. And it certainly doesn't account for the €multi-billion annual siphoning of the EU budget. Feel free to start that thread 😉 Of course that doesn't make you or anyone else using their gear in a band and evaluating in a band context, elitist! Lol - I may even use some of my gear in a couple of bands, some of the time. It's the mindset that says band use is somehow superior to a "bedroom bassist"'s use of their gear at home and the band is only valid place where gear should be evaluated. We see it all the time when folk say "yeah, yeah...BUT you haven't tried it in mix" as if to imply that their fellow BC'ers opinion is not valid until that hurdle has been jumped. I think the point is a fairly straightforward one, despite the meal that's being made of it!

"These trials have been nothing short of miraculous, revolutionary but in the context perhaps it is not surprising given our ability to innovate when we REALLY need to and we really needed to." Under the pressure of great crisis (war, this epidemic) humanity can work across national borders to innovate. What has been achieved has been truly amazing. My glass continues to be (a little more than) half full today 😊

Fair. It's complex, agreed. But check out transparency / corruption indices and you'll find Scandanavian countries (and NZ I recall) as the least corrupt and 3rd world despots most corrupt. Huge correlation between putting your countrymen and women first instead of feathering your own and your families beds and low corruption. In terms of absolute sums involved - the pilfering of EU budgets and the fact that their accounts have not been signed off for years and years takes some beating though.

Only if his MP implies that the use of bass gear in a band is somehow superior to use of bass gear by "bedroom bassists" at home. Use our own bass gear when and how we want, without the perennial snooty comments of "you have to try X or Y pedal in the mix, before commenting". That is BC elitism 😉

As much as we slag it off for not sharing our specific views, the free press and our own intolerance of such practices is our best defence. Drop an email to your MP, whatever their flavour, and let 'em know that this is totally unacceptable. Corruption saps the soul of any nation - if you've spent any time in any one of many developing countries you will know exactly what I mean. It needs stamping out and hard.

Brilliant - thanks for sharing! Just also read that AZ are going sell their vaccine to developing nations at cost (i.e. forgoing all profit) in perpetuity. BRAVO AZ! Incredibly heart warming.

Yes

Oh and the Oxford vaccine can be stored at +2 to +8 deg C. => much easier to store and distribute than MINUS 80 deg C required by the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine, so another big plus. (And unless I've missed it, the Beeb fails to mention this on their website too - unbelievable). [update - they've corrected this omission] The other massively important point, which the Beeb does mention, is that, the Oxford vaccine, at a price of around £3, also costs far less than Pfizer's (around £15) or Moderna's (£25) vaccines. That is huge in terms of affordability, not just for us but particularly for the developing world. Would be a great use of our aid budget to sub aid recipients in getting the Oxford / AZ vaccine. A good day all round.

The news is potentially even better: 90% success rate for the Oxford vaccine where an initial half dose is followed by a second full dose. With the additional plus that if applied at this lower dosage (rather than two full doses) the 100M doses we have on order from AZ will be able to cover pretty much the entire UK population!

Isn't it just a 734A without the PG, with a decent paint job so the headstock matches the body? I do do football, just not with my basses 😁

Lol! Soz Dawsons we saw you coming. 😄