Osiris

Tut Tut. Very poor.

It might not be wise to say this on a bass forum but the musical sound that aggravates me more than anything is the octave pull used by slappers. Slapped notes I can cope with but octave pulls, particularly when used excessively (i.e. once more then every 10 minutes ) are just aurally awful IMO.

Did you try it without the compressor in front? Did that make any difference? I've only played a couple of Thunderbirds over the years but I seem to recall them having hot pickups (correct me if I'm wrong), have you tried it with a bass with a lower output signal? Likewise your experience is very much at odds with my own. Could it be that maybe you have a duff pedal? If you bought it new recently, maybe try getting it exchanged? Or at least try getting your hands on another one to try. If you still have no joy it might be that the Mojo just isn't for you.

I can do you a good deal on a vintage Fender, owned and extensively gigged by Ramesses the great and also signed by Nefertari. Great condition for its age, the usual cigarette burns on the headstock and camel saliva marks. All original too, apparently.

I know what you're thinking but just because it has a brown grille cloth it's not one of those kind of Ashdown stools you find in most rehearsal rooms that have been thrashed to within an inch of their lives, and sometimes beyond, by some scrawny emo kids. I like the idea of it and for the asking price it's tempting, Your collective thoughts, folks? https://reverb.com/item/7642286-ashdown-studio-stool-speaker-seat

Let me know how you get on.

Interesting you say that, as @Al Krow says my experience is very much the opposite. I think it does the low gain warmth/touch of hair/grit thing brilliantly and is especially good for more vintage style tones - I can get an almost early Geezer Butler style tone from mine - which is exactly what I was aiming for What works for me is the gain below noon, the bass boost on but with the bass eq backed off a touch (around 11 o'clock ish) and the treble up to about 2 o'clock. That's using a passive P/J with fairly dead roundwounds. The inherent mid rich tone also helps stop things from getting muddy or tinny and adds that retro vibe to the sound. But the abundant mids also pretty much polarise it from the more familiar Tech 21 and Darkglass style drive sounds. No better or worse, just different. If that's what you're after then you'll need to look elsewhere as the Mojo won't give you that scooped sound. My experience isn't that it doesn't do distortion (at least what I'd call distortion) that well but it does a great fuzz tone if you rag the gain. Just a thought, try it without the SpectraComp in front of it as that may possibly be boosting your signal going into the Mojo and giving you a higher gain sound. My bass has a pretty high output for a passive but I can still get almost clean sounds and control the amount of drive through right hand dynamics. And for the record, I'm a massive SpectraComp fan boy, it's my secret weapon when gigging

Any old Trace Elliot gear. Weight issues aside, I bought a new 1215 SMX combo and 1153 extension cab back in the day and in the 15 years or so of owning it I just couldn't get a sound out of it that I thought was great, it was gutless and underpowered. On a good day it was mediocre at best. Plenty of folks still love them, but for me I can categorically say NEVER EVER AGAIN. The new Elf looks interesting though.

Martin just dropped by to collect a cab from me. The sale itself was totally painless and couldn't have been any easier. He paid cash and we had a good natter about all things bass. Enjoy the cab, Martin!

I've had great results with several of the SpectraComp tone prints; Captain East is good for subtle compression with some of the dry signal blended back in (parallel compression), Fed Comp is an ultra transparent subtle tone print, Butterknife is my current favourite for a warm, retro tone. My favourite over the past few months has been Muscle Comp which has a massive punch that slices through the mix brilliantly. Muscle Comp adds some additional high end that I personally prefer to eq back out. I've used all these playing finger style with both active and passive basses. I'm now using my own custom patch that is based on Muscle Comp but with the top end boost cut back down, a slight boost to the mids and the dry signal blended in at about 20% (I think). I'm not sure that I know enough about compression to build a tone print from scratch but if you find a tone print you like you can fine tune it to your own taste as I've done.

I'm happy to share some compression settings from the B3 patches that I use but I'm not sure if it's going to help much as probably more than any other effect compression settings will be more susceptibale to different output strenghts from your basses, attack strength, the amount of squash you want to apply etc. That being the case what works for me may not work for you. My favourite on the B3 is the M Comp model - no idea what this is modelled on though. The settings I am currently using are; THRSH: 22, Ratio: 4, Level: 62, ATTCK: 4. But I do like to have a good fiddle and am constantly changing things and trying different sounds. This is for a moderately hot output passive bass into a 30 watt Marshall 1x10 combo in the house. @Al KrowThe SpectraComp is in my pedal board and serves for gig duties.

I've no idea what it's doing below 20 Hz - if anything! Likewise, I don't know if it technically counts as a true HPF although I guess it's largely academic anyway as it is cutting the lowest of the lows from the signal. My amp already has a great HPF built in but I have found that when using my little Mesa 8 ohm 1x12 cab, the whole rig just seems to 'breathe' a little easier using the settings below. There isn't any obvious effect on the sound other than a subtle tightening up of the lower bass frequencies. The settings I use are as follows; Page 1; Freq1; 20Hz, Q1; 16, Gain1; -20 Page 2; Freq2; 32Hz, Q2; 8 or 16 (still trying to decide which is better for my needs), Gain2; -20 Page 3; Level 150. Give it go and let me know what you think, or if you find some different settings that work better for you.

Can't recall the exact settings at the minute but with the dual parametric, I set one band to the lowest frequency which I think is 20 Hz with maximum cut and a wide-ish Q, then the second band I set up at 32 Hz (I think) with a large (but not full) cut and a slightly narrower Q. Does that make sense? I'm happy to post the exact settings I used later if you like? I'm at work at the minute and don't have the pedal to hand

The short cuts certainly make navigation much quicker and work well with the limitations of the device. As with any multi-effects unit there's a lot of stuff that isn't going to get used by everyone. I probably only use about 5 or 6 of my favourite compressors and pre-amps (I set up a great HPF using the 2 band parametric eq for my little 1x12 cab) plus the occasional touch of chorus. Only a fraction of what it can do but it suits my needs. Looking at some of the other Zoom models, a lot of the 'new' delays, reverbs etc in the last firmware update are direct ports from other units so I guess it was quick and easy to add them to the MS-60B for not much additional R&D expense rather than giving us a shed load of genuinely new patches. Not that I'm complaining

The Spectracomp is both the simplest and at the same time probably the most complicated compressor currently available There is the one physical knob for simplicity, the function of which can change depending on what Tone Print you are using. You can also create your own Tone Print and assign up to 3 different parameters for the single knob to control so you could set it to do some crazy things control the threshold for the lows, attack time for the highs and volume of the mids all at the same time if you really wanted too! The Tone Print editor app allows you control over something like 50 different parameters and is crazy stuff. I'm still getting to grips with it myself, but there is an infinite amount of control available if you want to whip up your own sound. I usually start with a Tone Print that I like and then fine tune it to my tastes e.g. slight tonal changes by altering the respective frequency band levels and adjusting the amount of dry signal blended back in etc. Your language analogy is spot on, in compression terms for single band compression I can hang out with the locals for hours, but with the multi-band stuff I can just about order a couple of beers ask where the toilet is

As far as I know it can't be done, although admittedly it's not something that I've tried to do myself. I have also read the manual and don't recall it saying anything about whether it can or can't be done. But I have updated my MS-60B, did it months ago and it was quick and easy to do. The effects are grouped together by type and although navigating through them can be a bit of a faff on the unit there is a shortcut to the different effect group types (dynamics, modulation etc) that you can access so you can get to the right area and then manually trawl through the various options. I'm still lying in bed at the minute and off the top of my head I can't remember exactly how you access it! Not the this answers your question

Possibly not life changing as such but a lyric that resonates with me often enough, particularly on days like today where it's Christmas jumper day at work and I'm getting a barrage of comments for not joining in with other people's idea of 'fun' - there's only so much canned laughter that a man can take. Add to that pretty much any other vacuous passing fad, band wagon etc. Taken from Nirvana's All apologies; I wish I was like you. Easily amused.

@51m0n that's a great post For me this is the critical point. I think some people assume that compression will be an obvious effect in the same way that a drive or delay is. While it can be, for compression to be useful and usable, you will almost always need to use it sparingly. Due to it not always being obvious, I think there is a tendency to dial in a sound that you can obviously hear, which as you rightly say, by that time you have squeezed the life out of your bass sound. With compression less is usually more. The analogy I like is to think of it adding salt to a bag of chips (I'm not really sophisticated enough for the spice cliche ). If you buy a Kilo bag of salt and tip it all over your chips they'll be inedible. But just add a pinch and there's an instant agreeable improvement.

Me too.

Oooh, I might have to pop round for a quick fiddle!

It's good to see you publicly embracing your inner Bill Oddie Maybe you could change your user name to Owl Crow in homage to the great man? PS - you forgot Freebird.

According to this article, compression has been around since the 1930's. Although admittedly it's a bit light on specific details.

Yeah, I'm an unashamed Genzler Magellan fan boy The 350 model is a bit bigger than the TE Elf, but it's only 345 x 305 mm and 67 mm tall, so it's still very much a small amp. I have done a review of it (along with its big brother) here. In summary it's a great sounding amp with very sensibly voiced eq frequencies on the pre-amp, it delivers a surprisingly 'big' (dare I say hefty?) tone and does a great clean sound with the option of using the dual voiced Contour control to dial in either a scooped eq curve or a great sounding, mid-rich old school tone that works great in the mix. It also has 2 Speakon outs so you can run both of your cabs without having to daisy chain them. Oh, and it's ridiculously loud too. I've gigged it with the volume control below 9 o'clock alongside a shed-building drummer, guitarist and keys. I can't recommend it enough!