radiophonic

I've decided to bump this because (having dredged through it all and trawled YouTube) I've bought an Emma Electronics Okto Nojs. It was a toss up between this and the Octabvre Mini, but the sub squarewave fuzz option looked interesting and it seemed to nail that very synthy 'OC2' style octave down too, but with decent control over the level. Unfortunately, It's sitting in a depot awaiting collection and I now have to find a way of getting my wife to pick it up on her way to work without revealing what it is. I'll report back once I have it installed (assuming I live to talk about it).

Third Eye Foundation / Wake The Dead. The usual dread from matt Elliott, albeit with less of a D&B feel. The low end on this thing is pretty insane though. I think I'm about to have a big fall out with my main band and I'm trying to decide if I care or not.

Well style-wise, think Cocteau Twins to My Bloody Valentine to Seefeel. In practice this means a lot of signal processing and some quite extreme frequencies - sub bass and wide filter sweeps for starters. This would seem to make a PA a more suitable and robust transducer than a regular bass amp, particularly at high volume.

I figure if the monitors are good enough for the guitars, they will be good enough for bass and most of the band only ever hear the bass though monitors anyway. IEMs seem a likely move. The drummer wants to incorporate some electronics and the singer hits some very high notes and doesn't want to leave anything to chance.

I have a Behringer DI already! Why would I model a bass amp? Every gig I've played has involved the engineer taking a DI. At best they are getting the very simple pre-amp (Hartke - so just an old Fender tone stack with one 12AX7) and I run it flat. I'd have thought that the desk and PA speakers have way more effect on your FOH sound than any fancy DI pedal. Bass players have very little control over their sound really.

Not sure whether this should go in 'Amps' but it's about the exact opposite. I'm playing in a Shoegaze / Dreampop band and the guitar player uses an interface, laptop and the inevitable FX500 but no backline at all - just stereo outs in to the PA. Since he's already doing it - meaning we'll need a proper PA to gig, I was wondering about going the same route. Presumably all I need to do is plug my board into a DI box? A bass amp is just a personalised monitor anyway and no engineer will ever stick a mic on a bass cab, no matter how much it cost... Anyone doing it and are there any downsides that I haven't considered?

I'm no expert on 80s Japanese Squier basses, but I have a mid 80's 'Made in Japan' E-series Telecaster (cost me £50 s/h) and it is obviously greatly superior to my 2015 Mexican Tele Custom. The neck is just in a different league. They cut quite a few corners on the design (which must have saved them pennies at most) but the QC was first rate. They've become quite desirable - although at the time everyone slagged them off of course.

@tonyxtiger I think that both the Meris and the Source Ventris look very interesting - but just too much dough really. Both definitely have their own vision.

Sure. I prefer the neck on my Stingray to any other bass I've played, but I could do it on a P-Bass I'm sure. One of those Vintage inspired jobs with the block inlays would be fine.

I've been watching eBay for a Hardwire as it happens. No shimmer option, but I was playing around with my Boss PS6 last night and I think I can work around the shimmer. I'd prefer that TBH, because they've become quite faddy and I suspect that effect will seem quite dated pretty soon. Better to have a bespoke solution. Hardwire also have the a big advantage over Polara of legible control markings! The Cathedaral is just too bulky, so a s/h Hardwire might be the way to go. Alternatively a s/h FX500, racked with a simple footswitch on my board.

That's next-level. Perhaps working up to staring at the audience's shoes?

That sounds good. Not a million miles from what I can get out of the Malekko Scrutator, with an expression pedal controlling its filter - although that pedal is inevitably more wheezy and aggressive sounding due to the source being Bit Crushed rather than a gated Fuzz, which I think sounds harmonically richer. I generally run either an octave down or a harmoniser into mine to thicken it up a bit. The filter itself is fairly basic but can be switched from bandpass to lowpass and it has a separate Q control. Best of all, it has a built in preamp that really helps with tracking and balancing. They market it as a bitcrusher but its the filter options that make it for me. I've got my eye on a Xerograph now...

I play in a Shoegazing band. It was an insult that got re-purposed. Typically there are lots of pedal changes, so you spend the gig rooted to the spot and watching your board. All the original cohort had guitar playing singers, so even they didn't engage too much. These days they all have decent gear and look like any other band - even MBV were pretty engaged when they reformed.

I also notice the Zoom has some interesting Filters, including something that purports to emulate the ZVex SeqWah. I guess the only issue with this pedal is where the hell you would put it in your chain. You'd want it near the front for filtering and near the end for the verbs. Might be worth a punt all the same if I can find one s/h. It does have a shimmer too. EDIT - I've been looking at the MS 70 CDR (v 2) not the 60B. Not sure about the low end loss, but predictably there are a lot more weirdies in here. v2 seems like a significant upgrade on v1, but there's scant youtube info. All the filters are new to v2.

If you can process the reverse in less than the primary reflection time, that will give you what you need. The big BUT is that you can't reverse the un-reflected sound at the same time. Which I think is what you are saying. For some things this is fine - the classic MBV sound (what I call the roaring dinosaur sound) was 100% wet anyway. The intention for us is to use this live to recreate a recording that was done the old fashioned way - he played the chords in reverse and flipped the recording - but I think this is as close as we'll get and provided the reflections are fairly short and undifferentiated from the dry signal, I think it will be good enough.

Hmm - I think that poster is saying that he got something similar to a shimmer using those settings, rather than actually getting a shimmer, if you get me (i.e specifically octave-up reverb cascade with no octave on the dry). I may be over thinking this - I suspect I could get close using the Octave up on my Boss PS6 (which is turning out to be the most unexpectedly useful pedal I've bought). I probably don't need a 'no reverb' + 'no octave' component to the signal for the sound I'm after. The problem I always have is that I get a sound in my head and then once I have the gear to make it, I realise that if I'd spent an extra 50 quid on a slightly more flexible solution, I could also get the next sound I have in my head....

Do you mean the Cathedral? Memory Man is a delay. Both have a reverse echo option, but no shimmer AFAIK.

Gotcha. I'm in total weird-beard territory and I do have a sound in mind. It's finding a convincing shimmer and a convincing reverse in one pedal at a reasonable price / footprint that's my problem. It seems like reverse was a 'thing' in the 90s, but has drifted out of fashion, whereas shimmer is now a thing and will probably go the same way, to be replaced by another fad later. For clean stuff (i.e. 90% of what I play in a band), I just add a bit of compression and sometimes a bit of chorus. When I stretch out, I go a bit nuts... Still quite tempted by an FX500 although I reckon I'll get bored of lugging it around pretty fast.

@BigRedX - You can use a Hann(ing) window approach to do Fourier Transform at very low latency, with enough processing power. Obviously with reverse, there's nothing to work with at the wavefront, but you're constantly re-sampling the input signal. If it's done badly, it sounds like it (Reverse Delay on the Flashback for example - I can't work out how that's sampling but it's not at all right to my ears). I think the classic MBV / Midiverb II reverse sound only reversed the earliest repeats, which would be the easiest - probably for reasons of processor power at the time.

@Osiris - Is your last comment in relation to the overall tonality / SQ of the unit? It did occur to me that I could pick up an old FX500 for about 70 quid from ebay and either buy a simple latching footswitch or stick it in the loop of an LS2 to give me instant Soft Focus / Reverse. No shimmer, but that's easier to address. A bit bulky but genre 'authentic'.

Once again I find myself with pedal GAS. I've joined a Shoegaze band and I've been developing sounds for synth-bass washes and pads. I can get pretty close to what I need using a Bitcrusher / Filter and a couple of delays but I really want to use reverb. Specifically, Octave-up reverb ('pad' / 'shimmer' or whatever) and Reverse options. Everyone and their dog seems to be doing shimmer these days, but reverse seems like a harder goal. I don't want to spend a ton of money, but the only contender I've found in the 100 - 150 quid (new) ballpark is the DigiTech Polara. However, from the limited bass demos I've heard, the shimmer ('Halo') effect seems significantly less pronounced than with other versions of the effect. The illegible font for the knob settings are a downer too! Are there other options I've missed? Forget Strymon, Meris, Source etc - very nice indeed, but too much money and my Octave down needs an upgrade as well!

Native Instruments Guitar Rig - amp / cab sims and some of his effects chain, although he has the inevitable FX500 for the Soft Focus reverb. The app isn't the issue, it more about the physical connections.

I've just joined a startup band doing shoegaze type material. The guitarist is planning on playing without any backline and is using amp/cab simulators on a laptop. Actually, with all the sub-bass I'm using, I may also ditch my cab and just DI. Already in the practice room we've had the accidental failure to turn the laptop on at the wall and the power dying unexpectedly when the battery runs out, but even without this, I've got some concerns about the power cable or USB cables becoming disengaged mid-performance. Flightcasing will protect the hardware, but how do people get around the fragile connections when playing live? is there some way of tethering the cables so nothing gets yanked at the computer end? Or is this just a case of 'suck it up' and be careful. This must be something that function bands have to deal with routinely. What's the solution here?

We've all been there! I chalk things like that up to experience. Playing on a stage is worth a hell of a lot of rehearsal time and no band ever got proper tight in the practice space. When the audience does show up, you'll be ready for them. The flipside is that if even one person did show up, then somebody is interested and there' no point moaning at them that other people didn't show. I have been that person on more than one occasion and it often beggars belief how disinterested the general public is about any music that they haven't already had rammed down their throats. Plus you never know who that person is and how they might influence your future - I once drove to Utoxeter in sheeting rain to play to a folk club audience consisting of the promoter and his wife. He liked us anyway and recommended us to another promoter in Birmingham and that one was full. Great bands in empty rooms has always been a thing! I recall Hooky saying in his autobiography that he'd play to an audience of 1, on the grounds that Joy Division played to an audience of 0.

I think I'll wait until they are in the shops and go and have a try. The demo vid I saw sounded like the pedal was higher gain than my std PL - although this could be an artefact of the cap mod (i.e. more top rather than more gain). I generally really like George Tripps' stuff though and it's really bomb proof too. My guess is that the Conquistador might be a better fuzz for my purposes - i.e octave down > fuzz for kind on an on/off highly driven organ sound. I can get close with the Pork Loin + PS6 but it's not quite gainy enough and the bitcrusher is just a bit too extreme. I reckon the right fuzz is the answer. I'd be back to the footprint issue again though.