Al Krow

Mine would! But switch the compressor off, not a chance 😁

Haha. When is that quote from? Surely folk are allowed to learn from other BC'ers (and in life generally) and to evolve and grow in their thinking, wouldn't you agree? Or do we all arrive on this forum as perfect and fully formed bassists? Here's what I would say today: BUT frankly NO pub audience is ever going to notice whether a bass player is using compression or not. (Can I suggest that folk who disagree simply switch their compressor off mid track and see if anyone in the audience notices?). [Yup still agree with that!] In that context it's pointless, unless it's something that the bassist finds that they, themselves, notice and get pleasure from. - a prolific bass chatter

For my part, I'd really like to hear from fellow B1-4 / B3N users out there what your favourite Zoom drive effects / patches are that you have put together and what are you doing to preserve a meaty low end?

+1^^ In my case different amps, but identical sentiment: I totally love my Class A/B with its valve preamp; but in no way do I lack any confidence in the ability of my Class D to come up with goods at rehearsals or gigs. And my back is grateful every time!

@Sparky Mark Loved the last two sentences! Btw - I thought the LM3 was D class and came out more recently; did you mean its predecessor the LM2?

Is that a Spaceship from Space 1999 you're sporting? 😀

@JohnDaBass I know you were particularly interested in how good the comps are on the Zoom effects. Well I've not really rated them, until now! The Glam Comp effect gets pretty close to the Spectracomp which is set always on at 3/10 of my board (I've posted the spec on the user patches thread - which I know you've seen). It's actually slightly less mid punchy and doesn't give a volume boost on my settings that the Spectracomp does, both of which I like better on the Zoom. So I think I'm going to use the Glam Comp as my default comp for all my Zoom patches going forward. And I can't actually think of a good reason to hold on to my much loved Spectracomp right now, so I suspect that the B1X-4 carnage is going to claim its next victim on my board very shortly

Did you hear / notice anything much different? I've just been focusing on the (allegedly) reduced stress on the strings as per the Yammy blurb (propaganda? 😂) “Diagonal Body Thru Stringing,” where strings are angled at the saddle and pass through the instrument to the bridge at a 45º angle, as opposed to the traditional vertical stringing method which places more stress on the strings. Diagonal Body Thru Stringing significantly reduces this stress while transferring string vibration to the body reliably and efficiently.

Glam Comp - seems to get pretty close to what my 'straight out of the box' set-up Spectracomp is doing on about 3/10 (which is my 'always on' setting for it).

Except, I have to agree with dB that it doesn't look that good! And given the choice of through body or through bridge, I would go for through body every time.

I agree that for anyone going in-ears the Stomp looks ideal and is way more capable than a £70 B1-4. No question. And it's a Yamaha product after all 😁 Is the Helix Native software free for Stomp owners in the same way that Zoom's GuitarLab or ToneLib is?

Haha... @bassfan has ended up with a Mesa M6 and is on the way to getting his second (rather lush) Yamaha BB. And he's even got a pedal board. Not sure any of these were part of his 5 year plan 😂 @dmccombe7 a vintage white BB finished like this for your 70s glam covers band? Now you're talking!

But only the 415 is stringing through the bridge, the 425 and 435 are body through stringing and they both have the extended bridge piece - why? The 1025, 735A and P35 are all body through and, quite rightly, don't have the extended bridge piece. However, the 235 is stringing through the bridge and doesn't have the extended B string bridge piece. Methinks Yammy are using their surplus bridge piece stock on the wrong basses! i.e. they should be using them on the 235 and not the 435 (where they look a bit weird and serve no purpose).

You're starting to sound just like Mrs Krow! Except she never mentions preamps.

You could pick up a BB 234 / 5 for less than the cost of swapping the pups and EQ on another more rip-off design bass that charges designer prices 🤣 Joshing aside, dv247 are doing a brand new BB 235 for £300 and a BB 234 for £265! But seriously don't click on that link. As it's then only one step further to hitting the order button.

Andy - totally makes sense in the 415 as it wasn't string through body (right?) But since then I'm not so sure other than your economics point of, "oh we've got a few thousand of these bridge pieces knocking around which still need using up!"

And how did I fail to spot that the BB234/5 are available in vintage white?!

Just noted that the 435 has the extended bridge piece for the B string, not present on the 735A or the P35. Struggling to see why Yammy are still doing this given that the 435 is a string through body?

Just ordered mine from the Big Forest, should arrive tonight. Looking forward to it. I'm already feeling less guilty about owning 'only' ten basses. Wait...if I started to write up a short history of modern averagely priced basses... 😂

John - thanks. Having looked at the likely impact of both online your diagram seems pretty spot on! I had thought that the shelf EQ would provide a steeper and deeper cut at the relevant frequency, but that appears mistaken. In which case I will amend my switch settings to be HPF rather than Shelf on all my patches (fortunately just a 3 minute job using ToneLib!).

Any reason not to have it in shelf mode for the 30Hz one and potentially improve on the fdeck?

In case relevant to anyone else - replied to Luke's question on the B1-Four thread.

Hi Luke - pulling you onto this thread to deal with your very valid question. I posted quite a detailed rationale for why I, and a much more experienced US bassist (Jimfist), were both going back to a simpler Zoom pedal having had the Helix HX Stomp. Please see my post: Posted Wednesday at 00:23 where I share our combined thoughts on the matter. In my mind there is no question that the Stomp is the better, more capable and more sophisticated piece of kit and I barely scratched the surface of what it could do / only got round to making a couple of cursory initial patches. Interestingly a BC mate of mine gave me quite a hard time for not getting to grips with the Stomp and the fact that it was sitting on my board as an expensive tuner! However, the very fact that I felt little motivation to get into it whereas (as can be seen from this and the related Zoom patches thread) I've gone to town with the new Zoom pedal, kinda reflects very well the ease of work flow point I made in that post. (The slightly amusing thing, is that having got a Stomp himself and indeed got to grips with it - my mate actually came to the same conclusion as I did, which is the Stomp was more than he was going to need and he's returned his). For balance - there are of course a ton of happy Stomp users on the Stomp thread and a number of both Zoom and HX Effects users who have 'upgraded' to the Stomp. And I'm certainly not ruling out going back to the Stomp (it's successor or similarly capable multi) in the future.

Shelf = abrupt cut off of everything below the 'shelf' level (in my case 30 Hz) i.e. a 'cliff edge' cut off. Useful if you're only using to get rid of low end 'crud' (Edit: but based on our discussion below the HPF mode would seem to be better option for this). The Hpf effect on the B14 is (I belive) acting at -12dB per octave so in your case it will start cutting at 60Hz, by 30 Hz, one octave below, it will be reducing volume by 12dB and by 15 Hz by 24 dB etc. Useful if you're looking to 'tighten things up' at the low end. In your case you are cutting some of the fundamental notes on the B string which are already not going to be particularly easy to hear, given the combination of our hearing range attenuation and speaker frequency response which for most cabs will also be seeing some fall off in ability deliver low end. The low B is 31 Hz so you will be cutting the fundamental on that by approx 12dB. Not sure whether this was the intention? Tbf it's what a lot of sound engineers do and most of what we hear is at the first fundamental of the B string and above, anyway, which is 60Hz and not being touched by your HPF. I guess it's for the same reason that 4 string players might set their HPFs to start cutting at 80Hz i.e. just below the first fundamental of the low E string (low E fundamental = 41Hz).