Al Krow

Errrr...if your comment below was referring to my response to this post from Sid: It was meant as a pretty obvious 'take a hike, mate'! 😊 (Smiley face inserted to confirm that it was a good natured retort to an obvious wind-up). I mean wtf eh? Lol! If someone said that to you having no real idea of how / where / when you used your gear I think you'd tell them to take a hike, too? No? One day soon, we can but hope.

Lol, you don't really need to concern yourself with my gear buying habits; I'm certainly not concerned about yours 😉

Hi Biscuit Bass. Absolutely! Mark at Talking Bass is one of the very best online tutors out there IMO: he provides, excellent, clear usable lesson tuition and materials and often at around £1 / lesson it's fantastic value for money. But maybe dip into his free material first to give yourself a flavour of his style and approach? Here's a link to a thread that might be of interest: Paid online bass courses you've done & can highly recommend

What are your PB(s) currently laden with - any new 2021 pedal acquisitions you're particularly pleased about?

Good fix with the SG! Be great to hear some sound samples of both if you're able to rustle some up for us?

Thanks. Yup very happy with the pedal board and have slotted a Thumpinator underneath for good measure. It will shortly start to be used in place of the Zoom B1-4 solo at rehearsals and gigs; settings and songs to be worked out when it does. Will need to invest some time getting up to speed on the FI editor, as I'm determined to avoid another D-grade on my homework from @Quatschmacher! Bear in mind that the rig pic I posted just refers to my best gear purchases of 2021, rather than of all time, and it's certainly not the case that e.g. the BB2 struggles at all. It's just I know how phenomenally good Berg cabs are, having previously had a CN212 and when I was able to get my hands on an almost-new NXT in part-ex for a bass in my herd that wasn't getting much of a look-in currently, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. I've actually failed @bassfan's 2021 Gear Acquisition challenge spectacularly: I've had quite a gear churn this year including 7 basses, although I'm ending the year with the same number of basses as I had at the start. But the overall content of the Al Krow bass-ment feels like it's in good and very usable shape and, touch-wood, hopefully there will be plenty of opps to use them at home and with my two bands in 2022.

Duplicate post.

Great review, thanks! PS @gobasserk I should have added: I actually really LOVE your clean tone, too! What's your full clean signal chain in terms of bass, strings, amp and cab?

That completely ties in with @Old Horse Murphy was saying about it being "a lot more organic sounding than a number of other similar pedals". I can see the old Borg saying about this pedal is going to prove true...😁 I'm really delighted for Laney (who are based not too far from where I grew up) that they seem to have such a winner on their hands!

How highly would you rate it compared to other similar pedals you've had?

You really aren't helping my GAS for this pedal at all! Just been added to my 'wishlist'! In terms of the rattle it seems to only be when you move it towards and away from you and not when you shake it from side to side. Wonder if that is no more than just one of the stomp switches? Would it be easy to open it up and have a quick peek inside and if nothing obvious - you could maybe send that clip to Laney to get their thoughts on it. You've had various Tech 21 pedals recently. How does this compare to them?

Super impressed with all you guys who have managed to limit your gear purchases to just a couple of items and, have instead, been managing to put what you already have to good use! I'm hoping that will be me one day soon, but certainly wasn't the case this year! I recently took a pic of my function bass rig and realised that most if it, apart from a couple of pedals and my Boss WL-20 wireless, were actually all 2021 purchases! If I allowed myself 'category' awards for things I've bought this year, then: best bass is the pictured Yamaha BB2005 (just pipping a lovely Elrick); best amp: Bugera Veyron 1001M; best cab: Bergantino 212 NXT; and best new pedal: Boss OC-5.

👍😊

Now that is a good question! But it's not according to @agedhorse and tbf he does know his onions from his garlic.

Haha - zero need to do that as I also happen to have a copy of the said dictionary. It says: 'multi' [primary definition] 'many' (from the Latin multus = much, many) so it's hardly "my own interpretation" of the word, is it? It certainly does give a secondary definition of 'more than one'. However, I suspect very few guitarists and bass-players would consider something having just two (i.e. more than one) features to be a multi-fx. Just sayin'...

Some very helpful posts, gents. Had a discussion with the OP a long while back as to what constitutes a multi-effect, he was of the view that more than one = multi, whereas for me "a few" = more than one but not many and that multi is more than a few i.e. many. Most pedals describing themselves as multifx do have many fx available (Zoom B1-4, Helix Stomp etc), so I personally wouldn't regard my VTDI as a "multi-fx" in commonly used bass-player parlance. But it does leave me wondering which of the so called "pre-amp" pedals you would agree on being a true pre-amp and which ones you would regard as being merely an EQ with tonal colour added? E.g. Noble, Tech 21 plethora (Q Strip, VTDI, BDDI, dUg DP-3X etc.) MXR M81, DG plethora (AO, B7K, X Ultra), EBS Microbass 2, 3, Stanley Clarke etc

I sense that @ped has taken the concept of "being on the shelf" to a whole new level.

Interesting one. Would you say the same thing about an iPhone?

I felt it was a pretty disappointing review by Juan of the SY1 - he does seem to be a bit hit and miss. I actually prefer the reviews done by the BasstheWorld crew, both entertaining and surprisingly informative.

I find the 3 light tuner on B1-4 to be incredibly whelming! But that pedal was my best gear purchase of 2020, which trumped two basses and a Barefaced cab, so probably entirely inappropriate to be still going on (and on and on!) about it a year later... 😁

I may have just acquired the other half of that once amazing rig that you began dismantling by plundering the amp from. So who is jinxing who now? 😁

Particularly liked the bit right at the end from 3.24 onwards. Love the story of you hearing that tone and thinking "yup that's what I want!"

We definitely need to your hear your clips! 🙂

The preamp / EQ / DI / headphone amp is down to a really good value £125 at GAK. If it can deliver that bottled 'valve' tone @gobasserk shared in his clips of his DB500H (and I'm assuming there shouldn't be any reason it won't?) then I agree it's a very tempting proposition! Only thing holding me back is I've got a Tech 21 VTDI sitting on my board already, but it might be neat to have this as a standalone pedal to slip into the gig bag...