Al Krow

Yeah I get that the bass is going to be a fixed-ish weight around the 10lbs or so mark, including gig bag, that's not too bad though. Amps and cabs can be very heavy and a lot of us have deliberately gone for relatively light weight amps and cabs to keep the weight down, even if we have to compromise a bit on the sound with a D class amp. Or ditched amps and cabs altogether and gone FRFR. Smaller pedals also mean that you can get more effects onto a given pedal board. And the Valeton OC-10 new is less than half the price of a used OC-2, sounds incredibly close to it, is built like a tank and takes up half the pedal board estate. What's not to like?

Well that's going to be a slap in the face for many folk! 😁

Agreed. For me the polyphony and great tracking / lack of glitching combine together, so the pedal can easily work with your playing style rather than forcing you to change your technique so that it can cope. Means you can play naturally rather than needing to go for a more staccato approach.

Well you weren't going to get any debate on electronic stuff from me matey! Your ability to use your Helix LT to be a rock god, well now that's a whole 'nother matter 😁

Right - time knock this debate on the head. The Boss SY-1 is a cut down non programmable version of the Boss SY-300: "The SY-1 transforms any guitar or bass into a versatile synthesizer that’s fun, inspiring, and ready to play. Backed by advanced tech first developed for the SY-300, this super-cool pedal delivers a huge selection of analog-style synth sounds while occupying minimal space on your board. What’s more, all the sounds are polyphonic, allowing you to play both single notes and chords." [Source: https://www.boss.info/uk/products/sy-1/ ] https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/boss-sy-300 polyphonic pitch extraction is dealt with in the section "Right On Track"

+1 ^^ I guess I was lucky in that I'm a bit partial to a vintage white bass and as it was also cheaper it was an easy decision! The other finish that I could definitely have gone for was the natural alder, but I've made my bed now...cue gratuitous pic of my P7 And great choice of bass btw - it has a more versatile EQ and generally holds itself up well against basses costing several times as much!

I note you have the LT from your previous post and that there's a ground lift switch on the back. Does that not help in relation to breaking the electrical earth connection?

Glad it arrived safely I've had more than one experience of things getting lost in the post when not sent by "signed for" delivery, which given the current shut down of local Post Offices means it can be a bit of a lottery.

Oh dear this doesn't sound good! And from what you're saying it seems to be classic non isolated PSU related noise. Is it only happening when you're using the Helix as an audio interface to your laptop / PC and not when in Helix Edit? Bit concerned by your comment that it occurs when "going direct or going through a standalone interface" i.e. are you finding this to still be the case if you're going via a separate interface (e.g. a Focusrite)? FWIW I've not noticed this with mine when going via my Focusrite into my PC but then I'm taking a DI output from my VT Bass DI which is at the end of my chain. However the Stomp already has a balanced output, I believe, and the LT has XLR outputs which I presume are also balanced, so it shouldn't be related to that. So maybe it's the Focusrite that is screening out the noise?

This delivers 200W RMS at 4 ohms / 130W RMS at 8 ohms, I believe. And I'm old fashioned in considering an RMS watt to be a RMS watt, assuming that they have been measured accurately and not deliberately understated or overstated. Whether this is going to be loud enough for your gigs must be very dependent on your band and set up. In my case I'm using a single 8 ohm cab, with a full rock band and typically no PA support and I like a bit of headroom in my amps so that I don't need to drive the amp too hard. So I like to have a min of 300W+ at 8 ohms on tap. (I've actually got 450W at 8 ohms which is more than ample). However @Deedee's experience is a better guide as he's put one through its paces.

Ah yes, you bought that lovely Xotic in the FS - I've seen your NBD post. That's a quick decision to jump from 4 to "permanently" 5 then! I seem to recall that Luke was heading in the opposite direction after his first foray into 5 strings. You've clearly taken to it like a duck to water!

What 5 string did you go for - also a Sad?

Another really cool vid. Really nice groove on your bass line from your Fender P, but were you having a bad head day? 😁 Are all the basses in your other vids ACG single cut 5 strings?

That last point is an important one i.e. this is a synth emulator and not an actual synth. In other words similar to what EHX "synth" pedals are providing and not the same as the Source Audio C4, Panda FI or indeed the Markbass SS. Although I'd take this over the Markbass SS every day of the week! The dual filters, polyphony, SEQ feature, and ability to sustain the 'synth' tone whilst playing the bass-line over it are however all pretty neat and make this worth entry price and oh that great tracking...

Yeah but octave users do it all the time even when the method of creating the octave note differs. Drive pedals and HPFs don't generally suffer from latency or glitching in the way that octave pedals and synth pedals typically do. I guess it's simply about having a common parlance so we have an idea of what we're all referring to. So for the avoidance of doubt when me and everyone else talk about "great tracking" we simply mean that there's v low latency and glitching even when we are playing funkily fast. I'm guessing most of us are not too fussed about how the circuitry gets us there. Although, fair do's Woody, you're approaching this at whole level deeper and respect to you for that, mate.

That's in big part 'cos it has accurate smoothed waveform detection - nah blow that - great tracking(!) Which makes it really usable live.

Haha - that's definitely an electronic engineer speaking! As far as average Joe bassist like me is concerned, when we play a note and hear the effected sound coming out of our cabs without noticeable latency or glitching then that, in simple terms, is "great tracking". Soz Woody - but "accurate smoothed waveform detection" just ain't gonna catch on 😁

Yeah you definitely should - this thing has a ton of options and soundscapes under its bonnet! But it gets pretty quick to dial in when you've done the first few. Also worth making a note of any settings that you particularly like The key to this pedal is definitely the dual filter (that and its incredibly tight tracking!). Several folk on TB mentioned they were finding the settings giving pretty "samey" sounds - bet your bottom $ that's 'cos they are comparing them on identical filter settings. Altering the two filters can significantly change the sound of pretty much all of the 121 presets.

The Quad Cortex does look like a super cool piece of kit! I appreciate not a consideration for you on this, but I do think that pricing and ease of use plays a big part in our effects buying decisions and some pedals, whilst incredible pieces of engineering, don't seem to make it into the mainstream because they are considered overly boutique e.g Chase Bliss. If the QC comes down to Helix LT pricing, it will definitely require Line 6 to up their game. But Fractal and Kemper have left plenty of "space" for Helix and Helix in turn plenty of space for Zoom.

Great choice of bass - congratulations! I recently got a P7 (5 string) and am loving it - it holds it own really well against the other basses that cost several times as much and has a great P bass tone. I particularly like the versatility of the active circuit on the Sires - 3 band EQ, separate tone control and semi-para mids! You will rarely get something so versatile on a bass in this price bracket. Chris and others have mentioned Ampeg tones for the Stones. It's a great tone, regardless. A couple of ways of getting that, outside getting an Ampeg rig, would be a pedal such as the Tech21 VT Bass DI or if you wanted to go budget the a Zoom B14 multifx which has an Ampeg sim, as well as a host of other effects, tuner, drum machine and looper. In fact just get a B14 anyway!

I was asked recently on TB to give some pointers to someone starting out with the SY-1. I've included my post on our main SY-1 thread, in case it's of wider interest / use to fellow BC'ers: Patch ideas for the Boss SY-1: getting started Basic set up Recommend having the SY-1 at the start or close to the start of your signal chain - by all means after your HPF and / or compressor if you are using these. This is to give the synth the cleanest possible signal to latch on to. And, of course, make sure to switch the pedal to bass mode on the rear. I like to set the balance at wet 6/10 and dry 2/10 to keep a touch of clean blend to fatten up the tone, without dominating the synth output. Auditioning the various sound types A good place to start is with the inner (tone) and outer (depth) filters both set at 5/10 i.e. noon and then systematically run through the 9 core sounds with each of the 11 settings to find a few that grab you as being decent / usable. Many of them likely won’t and a fair few will sound quite “samey”– but that’s fine, at the end of the day if we’re planning to use this synth live, we probably only need to get 2 or 3 really good sounds for live use; and the ability of this pedal to track like a deer hunter makes it a killer app for that! So that’s 99 sounds to have a bit of fun working through. The magic sauce is in the filters! When you’ve got a few favourite basic sounds, the magic ingredient is adjusting the filters to open and close these to improve on the base sound. This can massively change the output sound to give you multiple variations for each of the basic 99 settings you’ve just auditioned. Ok you’re starting to get a feel for the versatility of this thing! For example: I quite like the Bass-6 setting. Dialling back the outer filter to 2/10 gives me a really good Bootsy squelchy filter down-sweep and dialling up the inner filter to 7/10 brightens up the tone. I now have something quite different to the base sound with both filters set at 5/10 and certainly, to my ears anyway, a big improvement and a synthy tone that I would be happy using live. But there’s more I’ve left out mention of the two SEQ settings for now, which add a whole further dimension to this pedal. They give us a further 22 settings to take the total initial settings to 121. Then there is the ability to hook this thing up to an expression pedal with a TRS cable. The SY-1 also allows you to include other fx in a parallel loop, to blend in without garbling the synth tone itself. I’ve got a Tech21 Red Ripper fuzz in my SY-1’s loop to thicken up the sound and might then choose to feed into a short delay which can add a cool dynamic to the sound.

But a rehoused FI plus a decent midi cable (the latter is pretty essential right?), does start to add up. I'm guessing you're not going to get much change out of £350 all in, new? So it's really playing at quite a different price point to something like the SY-1. But on the other hand I guess it's relatively easy to get a used FI, which has been out since 2016, whereas the SY-1 has only been out since last July and folk just don't seem to be moving them on, so buying new is still very much the only way to get your hands on one of these.

The competition is already on it: https://neuraldsp.com/quad-cortex Line 6 may be needing to respond sooner than we think!

Do / did any of you Helix owners have a SA Aftershock? I view the AS as being a drive multifx and given there is such a wide range of drive effects on the Helix, I'm thinking the AS is not going to get too much use going forward and it's time to move it on. Just wondering whether any of you held onto your Aftershocks after getting a Helix and are managing to put it to good use?

Lol! My "birdie" has just got back to me and informed me that he was just being sarcastic a la Donald ("No, of course, I never meant for you to inject disinfectant"). I've updated for 2.91. No amp and cab sims for the HX FX alas and Line 6 are clearly sticking to their own marketing. As you were folks...