Al Krow

Just had a slightly nerdy session dating my Ibby and Yammy basses. In case this is of interest to any one else... The more modern Ibby SR Premiums are a doddle to date: the first four numbers are the date (and the remaining 5 digits the production run number in that month) so 1608xxxxx is very easily Aug 2016 More recent Yamaha BBs seem to use a YY-M format with the first 3 letters providing the date, but using the following code: H=1, I=2, J=3, K=4, L=5, M=6, N=7, O=8, P=9, Q=0, X=10, Y=11, Z=12 => HMI = 16-2 i.e. Feb 2016

Ah you sing as well as play bass! And are now playing a Yammy BB. Gets better and better!

Phew!!! Ok, I don't need to sell any of my herd then! I know I'm fortunate to have a few decent basses to play and I love having them. As you say, they don't need to be expensive to be great basses. But I kinda feel that, space permitting, having some really good alternatives somehow keeps them all fresh. Well that's at least how I've sold it to Mrs Krow 😂

With pleasure - let me get my Focusrite & DAW sorted (bear with me - maybe a couple of weeks with other stuff on my plate!) and I'll post a couple of clips.

Ah ok thanks. I was able to get pretty close last night on my Boss SY-1 on arp setting.

Blimey Dave, if they both feel like 'the one' then, by definition, that must make them 'the two'? 😄 But seriously mate, very few of us get to thinking that any bass is 'the one' (@TRBboy being an honourable exception), so if you've found 'the ones', hold on to them!

Heresy, heresy, HERESY! Mods please get this chap thrown off BC for use of such offensive, contented, language. 😁

Don't you get a break after an hour, even if you're doing a 2 hour set? Or do you boys do 3 to 4 hours as standard?!

Sounds like a fun set! Let us know at the end of the gig how it sounded and also what the rest of your rig is, that you're putting the Yammy through?

Excellent - let us know how you get on! What sort of material do you guys play?

Congrats! Hope the gig goes well!

That's fair - part of getting a set of programmed presets that you can use.

Loved the arp synth & electronic drums you've got at the start of this track. What kit are you using to deliver that?

I've never really understood 'normal' drive being incorporated into other pedals. Just been discussing the same point about having a saturation (aka drive) in the excellent Becos Stella comp with @51m0n - we both agreed it was pretty pointless; 'cos if folk want an excellent drive they're totally spoilt for choice - it's probably the single biggest / most popular genre of pedal available. I'd much prefer arpeggiator over 'normal' drive in a synth pedal every day of the week. When I say 'normal' drive I'm getting at additional 'optional' overdrive in contrast to a drive unit that forms a core part of the synth tone generation or a gated fuzz. If the FI drive is either of the last two then I agree it's a core feature rather than an optional extra.

@Kiwi have to say, I TOTALLY agree. I really didn't know what I'd been missing until I picked up my SY-1 a couple of months back. The arp feature is one of the best of many good things about this pedal and a big reason why it's such a creative fun pedal. It is, after all, such a classic synth sound. What's the big advantage of programmable over manually tweakable when it comes to arp for you? Playing live manual is much more immediate if you need to tweak, although I'm a big fan of presets which is a key 'weakness' of the SY-1.

Having an apreggiator is really cool agreed! But it feels like a lot of cost and pb space to be delivering that with the FI + Freeze + Adrenalinn vs using a single pedal e.g. the Boss SY-1 or SA C4?

Haha. Wish I was!

...in the meantime, to get you re-engaged and not feeling too left out would it be helpful to state that, unlike harsh comments from others about your recent MB amp acquisition, this bit of kit is clearly pretty? 😄 😁

If you feel that, then you need to defo steer well clear of any C4 or FI discussion threads, as you will need proper brain power for both of those 😂

My guess is that it would be the SY-300 tech under the bonnet. Given that the SY-1 is one third the price of the SY-300, commercially it would be hard to justify the SY-1 being more advanced, and being able to 'cannibalise' existing tech both allows them to provide the SY-1 at a much lower price point. But it seems to me that the buzz around the SY-1 is rubbing off on other Boss products including making us have another look at the SY-300, which a lot of folk had I suspect dismissed. This is my first Boss pedal in many years since acquiring the PS-6 harmonist (great in principle, let down by latency) and the excellent Boss RC-30, which I will look to replace with a more compact looper. I suspect it won't be my last!

On the understanding that the SY-1 is a cut down version of the SY-300, the following extract from a Sound on Sound 2015 review of the SY-300 is quite informative on what's going on under the bonnet and how Boss have managed to eliminate latency on the tracking. "The engineers at Roland/Boss are understandably a little secretive about what’s going on inside the SY‑300 but, given the way other devices work and some knowledge of recent advances in polyphonic real–time pitch extraction, I have a good idea of the essentials. As you’d expect, some form of polyphonic pitch–extraction is used to control the sound processing but, unlike with most such systems, there’s no latency between plucking/strumming the strings and hearing the sound. This is because the sound you hear actually starts life not as a sample, but as the waveform that comes directly from your guitar’s pickup, just as with any conventional effect. You might not recognise it as such because its harmonic makeup is augmented and re–arranged to produce the familiar square, pulse, triangle, sine, sawtooth, and noise waves used in basic analogue synthesis, but that’s what it is — the processed sound from your guitar. This approach overcomes the problem of latency, of course, but it also means what you hear is directly affected by the way you play or the guitar’s pickup; the SY‑300 restores that organic connection between player and instrument that previous guitar synths sacrificed. Some form of digital pitch–shifting is then used to detune or retune the individual oscillators by up to 24 semitones (in either direction), and synth–style envelopes, filters and modulations can be applied."