Al Krow

Cheers Lozz, They're actually Lekato WS-50 (5.8 GHz) - normally £60 but Amazon have them on currently for £48 so I thought I'd give them a punt. I've had pretty good experience with the Lekato kit I've had - really good vfm, so fingers crossed with this. I've got my Boss WL-20s (2.4 Ghz) as a fall back, but was getting a disappointing amount of drop out at a gig on Sat night to the extent I ended up firstly standing right next to the receiver and then swapping it out for a good old fashioned cable by the second set! The drop out maybe entirely related to us starting to use wireless IEMs as noted by Russ in his post above.

I mean it claims 100m range. I'd be content with 20m so there's some headroom there and 6ms latency, which I can live with and comparable to Smooth-hound, which were fine. So if the 5.8 Ghz means it drops out less and hopefully not at all, then that should be fine. I'm about to find out...

Well I've just ordered a pair of wireless bugs costing half the price the Xvive U2s that kept dropping out and, as they're 5.8 GHz, represent a truly poor man's version of the Shure GLXD16+. What could possibly go wrong? 😂

Must admit I'm very tempted to step up to the GLXD16+ because of its available 5.8GHz band which is going to be outside the crowded 2.4GHz space - I've found my WL-20s intermittently cutting-out / not really giving me much range recently at a couple of venues maybe coinciding with the band also starting to use wireless IEMs also operating at 2.4GHz. Baulking at the £549 price tag, though (as that's more than I've just spent on our mixing desk, which seems the wrong way around!) and I managed to pick up my WL-20s used for < £100 and really enjoyed using them for the past couple of years.

As another MB LM3 former user and currently with a AC 121 Lite, suggest checking out the Bugera Veyron 1001M which delivers around 800W, is very good value and very well featured.

PS @SumOne interested that you found the Boss GT 1000 Core to be the "best sounding", particularly given you've had quite a broad range of the popular models. Could you articulate for us what you were hearing with that multifx, that makes you give it such high praise?

Oh believe me, I love the 18 month sale or return (at full price) policy you seem to operate! 😅

Wow! It is a pretty harsh overall summary! "Combining obsolete hardware, awful sounds and baffling limitations, Zoom’s latest multi-effects pedals are overpriced, underpowered and completely outclassed by the competition." Not sure that I agree at all with the "awful sounds" and comment about "baffling" in relation to its limitations. But I've sympathy for rest of the statement, which is why I personally am not tempted to upgrade my B1-4 to the B2-4, but have jumped ship, entirely, to another more capable multifx. I still rate the B1-4 as being the best bang-per-buck multifx available and having been a Zoom fanboi, I'm disappointed with the missed opportunity that the B2-4 seems to represent.

Actually triple parallel paths so you can eg stream LF/MF/HF separately - I'm sure folk will be able to make use of that tri-band capability; plus a ridiculous 24 effects blocks, which should mean setting up whatever your favourite clean tone is and being able to use it on every patch if you want to, and then layer your fx on top. 250 patches should also allow a patch per song for most of us (I appreciate several BC folk will have an even larger repertoire than that) and then order the first 30 or so into a 2 hour set which can be easily scrolled through. Obviously there's a fair bit of work involved, but being able to copy and paste will certainly help and once the work is done presets are an absolute god-send for songflow. Just gonna need to see if I can persuade our guitarist to abandon his pedal board dance routine and go multifx now! I've loved my B1-4; it's provided a lot of what I've needed as a simple one stop shop mini-board. And for the money it's incredible value - less than the cost of many single dedicated effects pedals.

Ah cool. I guess what I'm particularly trying to clock was if Zoom have created a whole new set of stock patches for the B2-4, or whether they are using the same B1-4 patches but they just sound better on the B2-4 because of an improved chip set? I think you're saying the former ie a whole new set of patches?

Yup, totally agree. I mean why bother having one convenient pedal with presets, which could do the job sufficiently well on many of your bass fx, so that you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference in a live band mix, when you could have 10 pedals and spend five times as much? 😁

Totally agree with that approach. There are just some things that multifx have not quite nailed yet, across the board in particular synth and filter and where dedicated pedals still rule the roost; although there's some serious quality in the dedicated digital space even for these.

Came out in Oct 2020, I'll be super impressed if they release an upgrade this year. I guess they would need to also upgrade the GT 1000 which shares the same CPU? Helix Stomp came out a full 2 years before in Oct 2018 and with Yamaha now in the driving seat and an equivalent stellar pedigree to Boss, I'm guessing that may be the more likely candidate for a refresh?

Long time multifx and Zoom fanboi: a Zoom MS-60B was my first ever bass pedal almost exactly a decade ago. Its successor, the B1-4 has been a super-handy standalone pedalboard for gigs over the past 18 months; but a new addition dropped through the door last week which I'm looking forward to getting to grips with.

Is it true that almost every track they've ever recorded is in the key of Em?

Nice review! When you say the stock patches are more usable, are they essentially otherwise the same as what was on the B1-4 or a whole new set of patches?

Core + SY-200 seems like a pretty awesome pairing and not take up too much more space than a Pod Go or an HX Effects.

Looks interesting. Shame that manufacturers making preamps don't think to add a DI out in addition to a normal 1/4" out as standard in the way that the comparably sized MXR M81 does.

@Jack that does look interesting. RRP seems to be £549 which is obviously quite chunky, but if it represents a significant step up over my Boss WL-20s and as you say offers the 5.8GHz outside of the crowded 2.4GHz space, I'll maybe be looking to pick one up later in the year when hopefully a few might be coming up for sale used.

More a case of changing key to suit our new singer (soprano) in the new band - typically between +1 to +5 semis above previous band which were generally in the original key and which had a female (alto) and male singer. I've simply been relearning everything in the new keys that work best for new band's singer's vocal range. I'd say key changes apply to fully half our set.

Only benefit for me is ease of key change on complex bass lines, avoiding the tracking / warble issues on a pitch shift pedal. It's kinda a variation of the drop D tuners that some bassists use on their 4 strings?

I totally agree that 5 string basses make life a lot easier for kry changes - one of several advantages they have over 4 strings. However there are just a few of the more complex bass lines in our sets that take (me) a much longer time to nail and muscle memory is undoubtedly helping live performance, where either a pitch shift or a capo could prove handy should I be asked to play in a different key eg Shut up and Dance by Walk the Moon. To put a couple of well known examples of more complex bass lines out there (not ones we currently do) if you had learned Rhythm Stick or Rio in one key, how easy would it be to play in a different key?

Nah - the positive trade off was swapping digital warble / glitching using a pitch-shift pedal vs likely having to retune more often using a capo

For non solo work, I guess for the same reason some folk use pitch-shift pedals on gigs, maybe particularly in terms of having learned a bass line involving open strings and then needing to play it in a different key for another band you're depping for. Will also avoid any of the glitching / digital warbling that can result from pitch-shift pedals, but perhaps end up needing to tune the strings more often during a gig, which is actually not a bad trade-off.

These things apparently exist in the wild and have been used by pro players e.g. Peter Hook Just been chatting with one of my session bass buddies and, like me, he's never seen one being used. Are they frowned upon?