Al Krow

^^ This!

@ch_moren hi there and welcome to basschat! The BassGEQ effect is a good general purpose 7 band EQ with frequency range from 50Hz to 10kHz. The mid centre points are little cluttered at 400Hz, 500Hz and 800Hz - I would have preferred 250Hz, 750Hz and 1.5kHz, but other than that, it should cover off most of your needs.

The ability to boost the mids is going to be key to cutting through. I have to admit to loving the ability to adjust EQ on my bass on the fly should I need to. On some of my basses eg Ibanez I actually prefer the active bass tone to the "duller" passive setting. Some of my basses are purely active and frankly superb tonally (eg Spector Euro LX). But can't you potentially get the best of both worlds by dealing with the EQ / mid boost on your amp and combining with the more organic tone of a passive bass, which on a Yammy BB is just great, if that's what you prefer?

But you'll be keeping your HX Effects, right? So not all bad in the Helix world!

Good to know that my fav amp of all time (Mesa M6) is considered to be "pro touring level"! I'm clearly not just hearing things when I regularly feel that it blows away the D class competition! 😎

Amen to that!!

Gotta agree with that. In relation to their bass products (obviously they have a BIG name and reputation in guitar amps also), I would observe that: It seems very few BC'ers are buying the WD-800 because of it's price point. From Wat's comments it seems that very few non BC'ers are buying any Mesa amps or cabs. QED?

The Zoom B1-4 is super compact - slips into a gig bag pouch v easily; has a bunch of usable multi-fx (although it's not great at pitch shifting and can't do the clever parallel loops that a Helix can), easy to read tuner and doubles up as a head phone pedal and at its price point is unbelievably good value for money. Yup I've found it hard to let mine go too despite, like Dave, also having a Helix.

I'd actually expect the opposite: if Mesa sales >> Bergantino sales, then economies of scale kick in and they should need less margin per unit to recover their R&D and overheads etc. Obviously a broad brush approach.

@agedhorse that is very helpful, thank you. BUT doesn't explain why the US list price of Jim Bergantino's Forte HP is listed as $1,399 in the US and available for £1,399 including VAT, shipping, warehousing etc etc in UK? OR why our collective experience is that something listed for a $100 in the US typically £100 in the UK allowing for all the additional costs you mentioned?

Ah yes, you've just reminded me why the Markbass AC 121 is still my favourite choice combo: it (pretty uniquely) delivers a full 500W through its own cab without the need for an extension cab, whereas the Rumble, if I remember, correctly is at 350W. Not that should make too much of a difference volume wise, but it did mean that I never needed to push the MB AC 121 hard, and it never really broke into a sweat as the sole unaided bit of bass backline even with full rock band.

Yeah, for sure - no risk of fading into the background with the Ibby big single Nords! 😎

Exactly what I was thinking too! Ant + Helix HX Effects would be a great combo, and the Ant addresses the lack of DI out on the HX Effects. Hence my cheeky attempt to see if I could twist Ashdown's arms to do a version that incorporated isolated pedal PSU outputs on one side. Appreciate that's likely to be a just a 'wish list' item for the Ant for a while...

Seems those of us who prefer Nords, definitely prefer Nords 😉 Must admit I've been pleasantly surprised by the Barts Mk1 on my GVB36 and goes against all my accumulated Nords bias - did they not cut it for you Woody when you had your GVB36?

Well err no. Doh. Who on earth uses a "traditional comp" with comp setting > 20:1 ratio? Or sets the threshold to a high enough level that it only effects volume spikes?

How do you rate the Geezer Butler PJs as compared to the Yammy PJs in your P34?

@ Mods - maybe worth merging this parallel thread?

The Yammy BB is outstanding for the money, no question, so not surprised you're finding it a hard bass to compete with. The PJ EMG GBs do sound awesome - I'd love to hear what they sound like in action. Any clips of you playing? @burno70 & @Frank Blank - come on boys, let's get some pics up that we can drool over (again!)

A limiter rather than a "traditional" compressor is maybe what you need to tame the pops / protect your speakers. Keeley Bassist or CompIQ Stella are two compressors which can deliver a high (i.e. >20:1) compression ratio and also have a threshold knob to dictate the volume level when the comp kicks; so these can also double up as excellent limiters. They are both quality bits of kit (I had the Keeley and still have the CompIQ) but they don't unfortunately come cheap. What's nice about using a compressor in limiter mode is that your playing dynamics are not impacted at all below the threshold level, and there should be no impact on your tone if the compressor is transparent - which both the Keeley and CompIQ very much are, although it's clearly the case that many BC'ers do prefer the effect on their sound of having a pedal board compressor in their signal chain.

+1^^ Conclusion I came to also when I A/Bd the various limiter pedals. It's not the cheapest option, however, by any means.

A comparison of the effectiveness of several popular models, I did a while back, which may be of interest:

Just connecting the dots...parallel thread dealing with slap and compression.

I'd best stay well clear of this thread otherwise it's only going to end in tears 😂 PS please tell me what the answer is when you have one!