Al Krow

Yeah - but they're less good for playing low D and Cs, than my thumb rest strings 😉

I think you'll be wanting a PT Classic 2 or similar to cater for your pedals. (fyi Mine might be going spare in the near future given my recent run on pedals, however it comes with a mint Mono tour case, which is light / highly protective, but quite £spendy and not sure whether spending the extra on that makes sense unless you're planning on taking your pedals out and about?)

Fair enough (and the same for Muzz's comment also?) I just think gigging bassists can easily fall into the trap of assuming that what we're doing with our basses has more worth than folk who don't gig. But with due respect, that's rubbish. How folk use and enjoy their gear is entirely up to them and if they get pleasure from playing at home or simply enjoying the aesthetic nature of their basses, well that's of no less value to them than to someone who's in a band. Life ain't purely about utility.

Yeah I invested in a PT2 (really good size aren't they) and then sold the heavy tour case and got myself a swanky mono gig bag for it to save on weight, but to hopefully provide really good protection ie best of both worlds. Funny thing is, looks like I'm going to end up just using my smaller boards (a Metro24 and now this HB 50M) and that swanky mono bag is in serious danger of remaining very mint at this rate!

So folk who are not in bands shouldn't own electric basses?

Joined you in getting a "GAC 2020 exempt" smaller pedal board - discovered the budget Harley Benton pedal board range at Thomann and they have a perfect size for my Zoom B1(X)-4 multi in the shape of a 17.5 cm deep board. The HB 50M with hardcase plus their HB Iso-5 pro PSU should be just the ticket and comes to exactly £99, which conveniently means free shipping!

Thanks for that - seemed be similar in size to the PT boards i.e. either too narrow or deep unfortunately. But...I stumbled across the Harley Benton range at Thomann and they have a perfect size for the B1(X)-4 in the shape of a 17.5 cm deep board. The HB 50M with hardcase plus their HB Iso-5 pro PSU should be just the ticket and comes to exactly £99, which conveniently means free shipping

This one is indeed an analogue clone of the Roland 808, but with the work flow apparently significantly improved. The Behringer logo has been obscured by the headphones I see!

Arrived today

Congrats on the new bass!!! I had an identical experience a few years back, wandered into a store in Camden and ended up trying both a Ric 4003 and a Lakland , albeit one of their budget Skyline range and therefore less lovely in terms of finish than the one you tried, and came to the exact same conclusion. The new walnut (my fav finish) Ric was on sale for £1,650. In hindsight a very good price for a new Ric, but at the time was enough to stop me biting. Prices have only gone one way since. I guess the one thing that keeps me from having a missed-opp regret is that I now require a thumb rest string on all my basses 😁 Hope you get a lot of pleasure out of yours.

@Higgie great / informative post! Very interesting also to see which of your pedals survived the Stomp cull! (Not a dirt pedal in sight!)

Lol! Someone falling over and spilling beer over a bass / pups / EQ or expensive amp & cab is going to do a lot more lasting damage than beer on my cheap t-shirt and jeans. IMO any of my basses, immobile on a stand during set breaks, find it much harder to move out of the way of a falling drunk, than I do. Yours, of course, may be more nimble.

Just spotted that the B1X-4 has another 6 pedal effects included (n/a to the B1-4 or B3N) which enable use of the expression pedal as a wah, volume pedal and pitch shifter. I had somehow missed this last one but sounds like fun!

Haha - you know my views, despite my having a bunch of gear I really enjoy, most things are good enough for live - it's all in the fingers: that's the cake. Nice gear is just icing - the sugar rush that makes us bass players happy (and btw that's not a bad thing at all!) Your fingers, mate, I know will make any gear work and there are plenty of other excellent bass players for whom a Zoom is perfectly adequate (as is their Squier basses). And rightly so!

Cool - I look forward to what you end up with and whether it's similar to the basic slap patch I shared above.

Sure - I'd be happy to have a crack at this. My gut feel is the HX should win hands down - it's just simply a more capable chip set with a ton more tweakable parameters. The equally interesting question, from my perspective, to other HX users is what drive patches have they got set up that they're using for live work and has this allowed them to dispense with their dirt pedals? The workflow on the Zoom particularly with ToneLib software is great and super easy to use (as was discussed at length elsewhere) and appeals to the "I can't be bothered to derrière about on a PC editing patches" person at my core; and the B1-4 also slips very comfortably into a gig bag pouch. But the Helix is a step up, no question. @LukeFRC has recently made the move from Zoom --> Stomp and, from the sounds of it, has not had any regrets! If you've got a choice but can only have one, Gav, seriously you know the answer already - it's a no-brainer. Get a Helix.

Well it's certainly not an HX Effects tips and ideas thread - haha! I think you'll find another one dedicated to precisely that. Be a good place to post your query 😉

Nice thread topic! One of my projects for 2020 is to work on some classical electric bass. To that end I managed to get hold of an Ibanez GVB36 with 14mm string spacing, which I've strung E to E but with top C detuned to B, in other words classical guitar tuning but an octave lower. (Hmmm, you've now got me thinking that a 6 string Wingbass may be another option to explore down the line!) Am now revisiting some of the easier classical guitar pieces that I once had mastery of as a youth!

I was trying to follow in your footsteps and come up with something pointless, but failed miserably.

There most certainly are! 😎