Al Krow

Always a "wallet risk" to have space for one more pedal on your board! Proton arrived yesterday to take the remaining slot on my mini board. First impressions: very positive - it’s really easy to dial in a tasty filter sweep. Signal chain is Smoothhound wireless-->Boss LS -->Zoom B1X-4-->3Leaf Proton--> Digitech Mosaic. As mentioned previously, the Zoom is in the LS2's loop to allow me to blend in as much clean to combine with the Zoom's effects. That's a must for a lot of the Zoom drive patches, particularly my fav Rat Tail, but it's a "nice to have" to keep some authentic low end with other fx.

Bought a pedal from Maciej. As mentioned in all the posts above - the item was very well packed, good communication and he is a pleasure to deal with.

Haha you're right, except the link above was shared by the guy himself who wrote the relevant post and takes you straight to his post. No need, for the busy bass player (ok that's none of us currently) to read through a whole 'nother thread to find it. You're welcome 😉

Following on from the recommendation of the Auto Filter sim, found a nice little post on getting to grips with it: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/line-6-hx-effects.1324948/page-108#post-21880052

Interesting that the SY-1000 incorporates an actual synth. Sadly it costs an absolute fortune. The Mooer GE 300 is the only multifx with a genuine synth engine, although there are a couple of effects sims on the Helix that pupport to churn out sine, saw and square waves, which would be worth looking into further. @Woodinblack @GisserD, you both have Helix: are the Helix digital sims actual digital synth (like the FI and C4) or merely synth emulations like the older EHX "synth 9" style pedals? Anyone know what the EHX Bass Microsynth was doing in terms of its (tbf pretty average) synth sounds?

I'm out. Pedal arrived safely from Poland this morning, so I couldn't even rely on the fall back of it getting lost in the post...£5 fine in the kitty. Well I managed to last a whole month. On the plus side I've managed to avoid buying any one of three excellent basses despite @bassfan's best efforts at thrusting Status and Sadowsky's under my nose, so I guess I should at least be thankful for that. Finn Dave is still in this and seems to be going strong!

I appreciate we've gone all techy over the past couple of pages, but I've certainly enjoyed the in depth discussion and now have a better understanding of the guts of this pedal vs some of the others out there. Besides, there's only so many times during the course of a 400 post thread that you can say "this is a great pedal with amazing tracking!" 😁

Mate, either all of it or none. 😁

The white non-x version is not too shabby either, just sayin' 😁

Cheers @GisserD - that's very clear and helpful!

I'm assuming what the FI is doing is pretty much the same as the Source Audio C4? But is there a difference between waveforms generated by DSP code and VCOs in generating the basic currency of synths i.e. sine, triangle, saw or square wave if the output were to be measured. Are the voltage controlled filters and amplifiers also DSP code and not analogue circuitry in the FI and C4? I guess where I am going with this is wondering whether even the best bass synth pedals are in fact a type of software "synth emulator" rather than actual synth pedals, and does it make any real difference to the sounds they produce as compared to a "real" i.e. analogue circuitry generated synth?

Hey Gav this short clip will give you a feel for what the pedal can do:

Agreed - not a fan of tokenism. But it's a little shocking what a disparity there is in the number of top male and female pop and rock (and jazz?) instrumentalists generally, not just on bass. It's not like the ladies aren't into pop and rock music! Obviously the same doesn't apply to vocalists where it's gotta be much closer to 50:50. And completely different again in the classical music realm where there are a ton of great musicians from both sexes.

They wouldn't be in my top 10 (only Carol Kaye would feature at that very top end), but I'd certainly be cool with bumping a couple of the others further down the list to make way for this pair 😉

How about Tina Weymouth? And if we're going current Kinga Glyk.

One of these left on fleabay for £20 if folk are still after one.

Yeah - that Leeds seems to have a big fan club! RAT drives seem to be both great sounding and the worst for sucking out low end of any of the drives I've come across. I've got a RAT drive effect set up on my Zoom B14-X multi on my little pedal board, but I've put the Zoom in the parallel loop of a Boss LS2, so that I can blend in an equal amount of clean to preserve low end and authentic bass tone, which seems to combine well with the RAT drive. Recommend doing the same with your Caline at some point.

All the extras on the 1024x you've mentioned are definitely nice to haves (as is the better looking bridge piece on the 5 string versions). But for me the biggest difference in sound is down to the pups. The 424 pups carry a serious punch! Whereas the 1024's are more civilised and harmonically richer sounding. I really love my 1025, but enjoyed having my BB 425s (I sold the first one and regretted it, so replaced it with another which also ended up in the possession of a fellow BCer). Anyway you're right, white is best colour for Yammy BBs 😁

Great looking bass and welcome to both the BB club and to Basschat! Which other basses have you played before and how are you finding the 424 compares to them?

Interesting you say that: I've been mulling over whether I should hold onto my AS, which is effectively a drive multifx, given that I have a whole 'nother set of multi-drive options in my Helix. What I really do like about the AS is it's ability to retain low end and augment this with blending in clean, as required, with an easy to use dial rather than needing to think about introducing a parallel clean blend (which can be easily done with the Helix) but requires an LS2 or similar for other pedals. What's the low end suck out like on the Joyo?

Gotcha. And the point is the SY-1 does them both together better than any other synth pedal I've played (and I've now been through a fair few). It's light-years better on note & latency tracking than e.g. the SYB-5, its immediate predecessor, and means that when you're doing fast runs, this thing can keep up with you.

In common parlance must admit I use the term "tight tracking" to mean that it can follow the notes played without glitching or noticeable latency. So that we're on the same page, sounds like you're distinguishing accurate note tracking (pitch) from instantaneous tracking (latency), right?

Nice one! Clone of the Tech 21 Blonde with many folk liking the Joyo just as much or even more. Seen comments about lacklustre build quality, but for around £30 not sure anyone can complain!

The potentially most controversial aspect for me is that there are only two women on the list. Having said that, none of the "omissions" mentioned on the posts so far have been of female bass players, so maybe it's just a reflection of the state of play and nothing more?

Very nice. Could I guess that you are a fan of the BDDI by any chance? 😁