Osiris

Cheers @Muttbass. The original review is a couple of years old now but I still stand by it. I gigged the Magellan for around 18 months and I still cannot fault it, the EQ is so simple yet has all the versatility you're likely to need (unless you're running a heavily effected sound, but you'll have your pedals for that). The pre-amp just seems to have exactly what you want, when you want it. I have never not been able to EQ to a room in a few seconds. It may not have as many controls as some other amps but you just don't need them with an amp that sounds this good. It just works. Every time. In my experience. My band ditched backline for IEM's around a year ago so I'm not currently gigging with the Magellan, but I do still fire it up from time to time because it is such a great amp 😀. So good that I also bought the smaller 350 version and I have also gigged that too. The 350 has the same flexibility of its bigger brother and is more than loud enough to gig with. It doesn't have the sublime drive channel of the 800 but if you're only using clean sounds it is more than capable of delivering a hefty, versatile array of sounds.

Fixed

I still don't think you really understand what I was trying to get at. Lend me your interface and DAW and I'll see what I can knock up with the Stomp. If anyone wants me, I'll be listening to this (with nary a synth in sight);

Cheers @dannybuoy I can confirm that this link works fine on my Windows 10 PC, just click on it and you get the full version with none of the blurb in the installation about it being a 30 day trial as with he previous link I'd posted earlier.

Just received some freebie bridge parts from Dave and he's a great guy to deal with, fast and friendly communication and the parts arrived very quickly too.

I had a go at downloading Riffstation from the above link but it looks like all you get is a 30 day trial after which it will stop working. In the end I didn't install it as I was hoping for the complete full version which looks to have been a freebie prior to being pulled. Ah well.

Thank you, Father Teebs. Does the absolution also cover the incident with the donkey and the gimp mask?

Looks like you can still download it from the link below, but I should point out that I haven't actually downloaded it so I've got idea if this is what it claims to be or whether it's a virus or some other nasty! I'm just absolved myself from any blame if it turns out to be dodgy! http://riffstation.findmysoft.com

It's like Crack to him.

Alvarez Baritone and the Cüm Brulees.

@CameronJ My pleasure, my good man 😀

Alvarez Baritone. Sounds like a Mexican pimp 😃

There's always one. And it's often me. And this is no exception! I owned a 250 watt SMX 1x15 combo and matching 1x15 cab, bought new in the early 90's and in time grew to hate it with a passion, it was an absolutely gutless pile of 5h1t that was about as versatile as Rik Mayall. It was my first serious rig and I'd saved long and hard for it. I'd bought it on the strength of the buzz about them at the time, still very much pre-internet times so I was influenced by the likes of Bassist magazine and the word on the street. I was still young and relatively inexperienced when I bought it but as I developed as a bass player and got to know what bass sounds work for me I came to realise that my Trace rig couldn't deliver the goods. I wanted a fairly flat sound with tight lows, punchy mids and enough high end to give the sound some definition. All the Trace seemed to deliver was a bright top end. The SMX pre-amp had a million and one tone shaping options but no matter what I did with it, it didn't really stray form a bright sound that was delivered with the slam of an asthmatic nematode. It was like dealing with an 8 year old; Trace, give me gutless sound with lots of treble. No problem. That's great, how about thickening things up with some audible bass frequencies? What about some more treble instead? Trace, give me some punchy mids. I know, a massive boost between 2-4KHz will work wonders. And so on. I eventually saved up enough money to replace it. I couldn't care less what the anti class D crowd say but it was replaced by a Mark Bass Little Mark 2. And there it was, all of a sudden there were all the lows and mids that were missing from the Trace. The Little Mark was rated at 500 watts and was easily twice as loud as my old SMX and didn't break a sweat delivering the lows and mids with a conviction that the Trace never could. So if TE watts are twice as loud as everyone else's, then Mark Bass watts are >4 times as loud! All in my experience of course!! Fast forward to last year and having more or less got over my old Trace rig I thought try again. Based on the high praise heaped on them on here and elsewhere online, I bought a TE Transit pre-amp pedal as my band was ditching backline for IEM's. This was a significant improvement over the SMX but still not without its issues, for example the so called legendary Trace pre-shape added so many subby lows that it was unusable. I reckon it'd even be too over powering for dub reggae. Still, the EQ was very good, and the dual band compression was fantastic. But that soon followed its predecessor out of the door. So it came as something of a pleasant surprise when I dropped in to buy a used bass from a guy a few months ago and he plugged it into a GP7 (?) (1x15 with 7 band EQ) combo to show that it was working. My initial reaction was to think "oh no, don't" but with the EQ set flat and any idiot buttons switched off, there it was, my Trace Elliot epiphany. There was that big, punchy Trace sound that's so revered. There was the weight and heft that was lacking from my old SMX. Mine was obviously a Friday afternoon special and I still sometimes shudder at the thought of it. But some 25 years or so later, I think I finally get it.

Spot on. ^ Compression metering is definitely of great value when setting up a compressed signal, without it the temptation is to flatten the dynamics to the point that the compression is audible and obvious, which invariably means that you've over done it and that leads to complaints that compression obliterates your dynamics. You can, of course, use it that way if you are looking for a dynamically flat signal as an effect (not that I can think of an example off the top of my bald little head). But when set up correctly it controls your dynamics and doesn't flatten them. However, in the absence of metering you can use your ears if you know what to listen out for, that's what I've done with my Stomp compression patches and they work for me, giving me the control and punch that I like.

Someone agreed with your unsubstantiated claim (only one of them by the way) therefore your statement has indeed been validated. My defense withers in the face of such empirical evidence 🤣🤣🤣

My interest was based more on your ad nauseam repetition that the synths on the Stomp are noticeably inferior to those of dedicated synth pedals such as the Future Impact, without actually offering anything in support of that claim, rather than any serious interest in bass synths themselves. I thought I'd been fairly unambiguous on that point in my previous posts? Or was I being too subtle?? Didn't the link to the The best (insert whatever here) thread give you a hint??? My background is in science which is an area where anyone making a claim needs to provide evidence to back it up, otherwise they are ignored. Unsubstantiated claims do not last long in scientific circles. And quite rightly so. Unfortunately this is a trait that I carry into my everyday life too, if you can't support the claim you're making don't expect me to take any notice of it. It's also a handy way to filter out some of the copious amounts of bovine excrement that life throws my way. Not that I'm implying anything personal here 🐄 💩 But as I'd (also) said in an earlier post, just playing with the synth models in the Stomp and mindlessly tweaking parameters, the functions of which I don't understand, was yielding results that to my untrained ear were comparable to some of the synth clips that I've heard online - though these are not exclusively Future Impact clips. The clips posted by Quatshisname do indeed sound great, and may well be "better" (presumably measured by whatever metrics you are use to determine betterness?) than the various models currently in the Stomp, but until I see of hear a direct head to head comparison between the two any claims of superiority shall remain, in my eyes, an untested hypothesis. Conjecture. Speculation. As for my compression settings...

Thanks, @Quatschmacher for stepping up when others couldn't or wouldn't! COUGH* @Al Krow *COUGH.

The pub circuit we play, roughly Northants, Bucks to Leicestershire-ish, pays between £250 to £350. There's the odd venue that will pay below that (which we avoid!) and only 1 or 2 WMC's that will pay more. But £250 is standard in most places that we play.

Both bought used, I prefer to buy new so you don't have to chisel the various solidified secretions of the previous owner off before feeling comfortable but these we at prices that I couldn't refuse. Both punch well above their weight too. The reverse P is great as is the fact that the bridge pickup is closer to the neck than the standard positioning means that it's useful too, I find the standard positioning of bridge pickups gives a sound that's too thin and nasal for my tastes. I assume that much of this collection was bought used too?

A bit of upper mid boost to add some presence to the inherently dark short scale tone, pulled back the lows and treble a touch, and a healthy dose of compression. Strings are La Bella S500L's.

Here's a gratuitous shot of my cheap practice set up, a £30 amp with a £50 bass. For creative home use on a budget only.

So you keep saying. And while that may very well be true I'm yet to see or hear anything that supports that claim, so until then I'll remain firmly on the fence. So I'll repeat my request for some audio or video samples to help me make my own opinions as I much prefer my own to those of others I'm kinda selfish like that. As I have said to you (several) times before, I use different compression settings for different basses and what works for me is unlikely to work for you, so this is a pretty pointless request. You're currently playing active 5's and I'm currently playing short scale passive 4's. Your basses almost certainly have a greater dynamic range than mine and will require different settings to accommodate that. Each compression patch I have set up has different parameters to help flatter the sound of that particular bass, for example the settings for my Mustang are not so flattering for my Corvette and vice versa. But generally speaking I find a fast attack and slower release times with a modest ratio works, then adjust each of the threshold to suit the bass.

4. Helix Stomp vs Future Impact (Synth) 1-0 to Stomp

But I've not been banging on about how good the compressors are like you have over the filters and synths! And we all know that talking to you about compression is like clapping with one hand 👐🖐️ 😀 So you keep saying. But what you don't say is how or why, or provide any evidence (sound samples, videos etc) to support that claim. You know me well enough to know that I don't take anything at face value. We're back to Hitchens Razor; That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Or is it time to revive what was the best thread ever on any internet forum, despite its original ephemeral life span;

Just a bit! Agreed, I've seen you ( @Al Krow not Krispn!) state several times that the filters and synths in the Stomp are not as good as the real thing. Now I'm happy to admit I know absolutely nothing about filters and synths, they're not really something that interest me that much, but playing around with the various models in the Stomp I'm getting what to my ears sounds just as good (whatever that means to you) as some of the clips that I've heard from folks on here. But as I said, it's not something that I know anything about so I'm sure folks with way more knowledge and experience than me will be able to tell me what I'm missing.