Al Krow

The only thing that I've come across that tracks effortlessly and at speed down to a low E is the Boss SY-1. It's also polyphonic. But it's a very transparent octave down, and you may want something with more flavour - or alternatively add a bit of grit with a dirt pedal of choice. Oh and octave down is just a "side effect" for the SY-1. It does a huge amount else as its main focus.

Or if, like me, you can't be ars*d to use a PC to do Toneprint editing, but prefer the immediacy of dials and want something that sounds at least as authentic (IMO even better!) as a faux 8 string as the TC... ... then get a Digitech Mosaic (or it's even more featured sibling, the Ricochet).

Well that's a big encouragement to pick up my fretless Ibby Portamento then, which has lain untouched for far too long! If a fretless can fool a middle aged bass player with poor speakers on his mum's PC into thinking it's an upright, it's gotta have something going for it, eh? 😁

If you're into £200+ territory and you want the immediacy of dials, check this unit from Empress. https://empresseffects.com/products/paraeq

Nope - maybe just poor quality speakers on the PC I was at! Best have another listen through headphones eh? What did you hear it as being?

Upright double bass, rather than electric, right?

@Quatschmacher - I've got a sneaky suspicion that the new Source Audio EQ will get Dave to where he wants to be?

I think there is often a "cancelling" effect when both pups are engaged equally. It results in a sweet slight mid scoop on my Ibby JJ, which actually is quite attractive. On the older series like my BB 1025, however, the mid switch position combining the P+J adds bridge J grit to the P and is the default setting for many of us. Be interested to hear from other 734A users if they are getting the same result as you with both pups set at 50:50.

The "chorus" bass line (first at 029 to 041) sounds like its played with pick up at the dusty end. No way was that bit a synth - good that we aren't completely usurped by electronica just yet!

There's a current TB thread on Tech 21 pedals and a comment from one of the posters re. Tech 21 confirmation. But if you also found differently, I should reduce that percentage figure 😂

From the comments I've read, 99% of folk found the exact same thing with the Tech 21 dUg Pinnick, which I believe Tech 21 themselves may have acknowledged. I guess that's one of the benefits of having the AO on the AO900 - you have some impressively flexible gain stage options on that amp!

Sid - a couple of posts from me on here a while back, which look at the amp and AO drive in a bit of detail: The clean tone on the amp is great, and it now has a 6 band EQ rather than 4 band with variable mids; and I know you were hugely impressed with the clean tone and EQ from your own review of the Mk1 in your amp shoot out a few years back. When I'm playing live I tend it to use it mostly clean, and maybe add a bit of grit from the drive for harmonic richness, rather than using it full on drive mode.

Gotcha - that's definitely a crap experience to have had! Was it just an unfortunate one-off or did it require a full repair / replacement - hopefully under warranty? FWIW - I find that the Tech 21 VT Bass DI, which is more featured than the VT Bass you've tried, really hits the spot in terms of that 'blanket lifting' effect, even with gear I really wouldn't expect it to "improve". Primarily I think due to the 'bite' switch which I leave permanently on, and which provides a ‘presence’ boost by boosting the upper mids and treble so that the tone becomes more pronounced and present especially in a mix. It also has a subsonic HPF filter to tighten up the sound. It's also got a very decent 3 band EQ & character / drive dials for tone shaping from clean to full on dirt. Put that all together and it's very possibly exactly the antidote needed for a dark sounding bass? Out of interest why are short scales darker than 34" scales?

Won't your Helix Stomp give you pretty much all the tone shaping options you need? What do you feel it's lacking?

I've not managed to find anything on YT for the Pigtronix Octava on bass...guess I'll get my own chance to give it a spin when it lands next week! But I think the combination of LS2 + Octava may be the ticket.

Came across your post on another thread and found myself intrigued. I'm guessing you didn't take it any further with this pedal? It's obviously an octave up rather than down and unlike, the digital Digitech Mosaic or Ricochet which does an excellent polyphonic clean octave up as mentioned above, this is an analogue frequency doubler with diode clipping fuzz and with lpf to roll off any grating toppy-treble. It seems to be very much aimed at guitarists but I reckon it might be interesting on bass, although I've not found anyone who's reviewed it on bass yet. Apparently it's crap at handling minor chords but deals with major chords well! From the YT clips I've seen, the blend seems to either swamp the dry signal or have no wet signal at all. But paired with an LS2 this thing might just be freakin' brilliant! Love the compact form factor and the fact it's got an excellent built in fuzz. New prices can be a little bit punchy on this, which definitely puts me off makes trying one out on spec but I think I may have managed to snag one used on Reverb...

+1 for the Digitech kit. I've got the simpler Mosaic and it does an excellent job at just octave up. I recorded some clips a while back, using the Mosaic and managed to persuade at least a few BC'ers that it was a genuine 8 string! The Ricochet adds a ton more features, though, for not much extra cost.

Yeh something like that (with an octave up) would be pretty neat! Kinda reminds me of some of the pedals that Tom at COG was doing half a decade ago...

Not really harsh - his "big" thing was going to be the octave up, wasn't it? In the end, not too much has changed on Mk3 and it's left a lot of his fan base a little disappointed. Don't always have to be a mega corp to deliver good value, although I agree it can help. The most faithful OC-2 clone IMO is the Valeton OC-10 which is even better value - not sure we would regard them as a mega corp either? Besides mega corps have a LOT more mouths to feed, property rental costs etc. etc. I think the OC-5 is going to put a lot of pressure on boutique OC2 clones who's key selling point for charging £££'s was you get an OC-2 but better.

So £300+ for a 3Leaf Octabvre Mk3 - key selling point that it does the OC2 thing very well and with better tracking, but singularly failed to include an octave up, despite promises that it would or £119 for an OC-5 which does the OC2 thing very well and with better tracking and with octave up. Hmmm...I wonder which one is going to outsell? 😁

Going the other way: there's a rumour on the TB OC-5 thread that Boss have put the SY-1's tracking into the OC-5. If that's the case, it's a bit of a game changer! Clearly the feedback to Boss on just how fantastic the SY-1 is at tracking has not been lost on them! Obviously the SY-1 is a fair bit more expensive and can do a whole bunch of other cool stuff besides octave down (and up), and it also has a parallel loop facility and can be used with an expression pedal which the OC-5 doesn't. fauxtoe said: ↑ fauxtoe said: ↑

Good point - that now makes complete sense (even if its the wrong way around for us bass players)! This pedal does have a switch to go from guitar <--> bass mode (similar to the SY-1) so it's clearly been aimed at both markets as you say. Wouldn't it have been bloomin' marvellous if by dint of switching from guitar <--> bass mode the 'polarity' on the range sweep was also reversed so that bass players could select how low the octave down went? That way they would be keeping both bass players and guitarists happy - it would certainly have tipped me over the edge into getting one! Boss if you're reading this thread...

Haha - I was simply trying to give you an example that might work for you when you are playing 4 strings. 5 string players have more flexibility of using or not using an octave pedal at all, as I think we have just demonstrated. Hence my earlier comment of having much less use of octave pedals these days! And don't get me wrong having the low B string is great! Which is why I play 5ers. But it will be a somewhat different flavour to playing the notes an octave up with an octaver-down pedal added and two notes simultaneously ringing out, as you already know. IME octave-up pedals don't quite cut it in the same way: I find they sound much tinnier than the equivalent pitched note played normally, and often come with greater latency issues than octave down pedals.

You and me both - just had one gig a couple of weeks back and no rehearsals in the past six months! Agreed - it won't be for every track for sure. And tbf I have much less use for octave down now I'm playing 5ers exclusively. But I guess an obvious example would be something like Bruno Mars - Runaway Baby to kick in the octave down part way through the main bass riff which I mainly play an octave above low E. Will save me physically playing the main riff an octave down starting on the 5th note of the low B string to provide contrast. Yup, that would be an awesome combination - the Proton MkIV (I've got on my board) and Octabvre MkIII have both come out this year. And a combo that would also leave your bank balance a tad lighter too 😁