radiophonic

Fun Fact. Chubby Brown's cousin Lee is an insanely good guitar player. Chubby Brown was his first drummer. He lives in Norwich (my old hometown) and has run bands there for about 30 years.

Weirdly, Youtube just recommended me a Janek Gwizdala video and in it, somebody asks him 'what happens if you connect all your OC2's together'. He suggests doing it in a club and blowing up their PA.

I'm not a fan. I get what you mean though, I remember hearing the first track from the Out of The Silent Planet LP and I do recall it sounding like the guitar and bass were totally meshed together, almost like a single instrument.

'best pedal in the f****** world that sounds the way I want and I don't have to pay for' more like. It sounded very compressed to me and the distorted top would get completely lost in the music I play. There's not much point deciding on a distortion without the rest of the band playing IMO.

Where are you based? The best thing to do with a Chorus is go to a big shop and try a few. It's not like a Sub or a Comp where you need to really crank it to hear what it does. FWIW, I didn't like the Boss one either and settled on an MXR BCD. It's not cheap, but it's a dual Chorus/Flanger with a useful X-Over and I think it sounds great. As far as non-boutique goes, it's highly regarded.

Sounds like I wouldn't lose anything sonically and would even gain some flexibility in addition to the reduced footprint. This pedal malarky never ends does it?

Why would you stay away from all digital compressors? There are good and bad examples of analog and digital. The MXR is a good comp, but there's plenty of love for the Spectracomp on here and elsewhere. Sweeping generalisations don't really help.

So basically I've run out of pedal board and I have Phase 90 perched precariously on the back. Question is whether a more compact pedal could do the job and the 95 seems like the obvious place to start. The important thing to add is that I only use it for one very specific type of sound: Rate set to a very low sweep to add a bit of movement. I don't go for that watery warble effect and I specifically got a P90 in preference to the 4 stage sound on a Boss. It's that sound. How close can I get and is the 95 the way to do it? Opinions appreciated.

Not to be dismissed is the Boss BC1X. Ovnilab compares it favourably with the MXR and I've certainly found it to be fit-and-forget and nothing at all like the old analog Boss Comps (CS2 for example). The metering is very good on it too. The Spectracomp lacks meters and (as DB points out) is only great provided you don't need to change parameters mid-set (new bass etc). Although I suppose that you could assign 'bass swap' set of parameters to the knob and have one half of the sweep dedicated to each bass or something. I'd definitely consider one for studio use with a laptop connected or as a super compact 2nd comp with some sort of stunt setting or for a small board, but for routine gigging I'd definitely want more fingertip control. Boss or MXR. That's assuming you want 'clean'. Other flavours are available of course.

I look forward to your comments on this one, especially if you use an expression pedal. Against your advice elsewhere, I've scored up a S/H Boss Harmonist from ebay, on the grounds that I'd need a Picthfork and a Digitech Ricochet to cover the functionality. The price was right, so I'll recover the cost if the tracking isn't adequate, but it's mostly intended for weirdness and I have a Sub n Up for straight octave up/down operations.

Kraftwerk. No question.

That's the most hardcore pedal board ever. The sound turns into something between a heartbeat and breathing... which might actually be usable in some contexts. I'd like to hear it through a D&B rig though.

My tin is pretty corroded and the track-sheet disappeared at some point but the vinyl is still flawless. I have Second Edition too, but the bass extension isn't even close. 45 rpm for the extra 6dB of win! For some reason though, I tend to play Flowers of Romance more often even though there's no bass on it.

I've only had EHX gain pedals, but I found the switches quite noisy. The Soul Food (in particular) clunks in TB mode. Gain may be a special case though and I know plenty of people use POGs without complaint. Just my experience and enough to make me wary of dropping 140 quid!

Well assuming the internal power regulation doesn't fry, you're probably increasing the headroom right? And I doubt Darkglass skimped on the specs of the components. I run a Pork Loin at 18v (Dunlop say 'don't' but others have had an unofficial 'it's ok') and the improvement in clean pre-amp headroom is significant. In fact at 9v, the clean side clips nastily with bass and at 18v it's totally clean. It's the difference between 'not for bass' and 'awesome'.

Ok - the low-end tracking is interesting. The bass demos I've seen have concentrated on > 12 fret solo type stuff... perhaps for good reason!? In the pitch glide mode, I've seen a demo using realistic low end on the PS-5 and that seemed to track ok, but the playing was slow paced (it was the Pedals and Effects Tera Melos bass board one). I'm pretty anti EHX on build quality grounds and with a pedal that relies on a lot of switching in and out, I'd be concerned about longevity, whereas Boss are just tanks and those switched last forever. I''ve had a quick look at the DigiTech Ricochet too - but that is really limited to the portamento function and doesn't take an expression pedal, but does have some cool asymmetric glide-rate control options. Hopefully others can pitch in about the EHX though. I'd like to be wrong about them - they do some cool wacky pedals and seem to be prepared to keep it weird.

I've watched a couple of pitchfork demos and it looks pretty good. It seems like the fucntionality overlaps the PS-6 but that they aren't quite the same but PS-6 bass demos are thin on the ground though (and I don't need to see yet another classic rock dude being thin lizzy all by himself) so it's hard to evaluate tone and tracking. I've had a few problems with EXH switch noise too, and with a pedal like this quiet switching is pretty vital.

What I'm after is a trail of user definable intervals (3rd 5th for example), delayed but no delay on the original signal. I'm pretty sure the Timefactor does this but it's just too big and extravagant and I wouldn't use a lot of it's functionality. Its just a pity the Harmonist doesn't have a few hundred ms of delay built in.

It's possible I haven't thought this through, but I was imagining delaying the harmonised notes (a harmonised delay cascade following a simple unaffected root note pattern). I suppose running a delay at unity blend into a harmoniser would do the same thing although I'd get the clean note delayed too, which I don't want and my proposed switching set-up wouldn't work doing this either. I'm pretty sure the Julie Slick demo used a Pitchfactor but I was hoping to keep the footprint down more than anything. The old PS2 would do this though right? Just less flexible with the harmonies?

Actually, I suspect that neither of them will do what I want! What I'm thinking of is hitting a note and getting delayed harmony notes, so I can build up harmonised rhtythmic patterns. It doesn't look like these do the delay part. I've seen Julie Slick do it on Eventide stuff and sort of assumed that since the PS6 was derived from the old PS2, the delay function would be retailed. No mention in the manual though.

Definitely passive. Just a lower impedance pot than what I have now.

I think this will work, but I'm interested if anyone else has tried it. I think I can use the two channels of a low impedance volume pedal to act as both a volume pedal and an expression pedal, switching between functions using a BOSS LS2. I need to buy a new FV 30L anyway - I stupidly bought the 'H' version and I'm getting some bass cut with a buffered input. My only doubt is whether 25K is too low to work as an expression pedal. The Strymon manual suggests 'at least 25K' so I'm a bit hopeful. Opinions appreciated. Description: A passive volume pedal (Boss FV 30L) with stereo I/O. Stereo L I/O used in one loop of an LS2 to control the volume input to a delay pedal. Stereo I/O in the other loop of an LS2 used with a TRS cable to control the expression input on another pedal. I've got my eye on a PS5 Super Shifter / PS6 Harmonist type pedal. Layout Below:

^^ They are also good if you have short pedals next to tall ones or if your board is generally cramped - saves you doing sideways foot manoeuvres.

Just as long as we are clear that 'casting couch' refers to being the victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault. There is a lot of luck involved though. Playing the right music at the right time or one song being picked up by a TV show or a DJ or someone remixing you and everyone hearing it when they are on their hols. It's pretty random really. I recall when (the excellent) Aereogramme split up they referred to an 'almost telepathic ability to avoid the zeitgeist'.

Fortunately PMT in Nottingham is utterly useless for bass gear. This allows me to regularly play the 'of course I don't want to take a detour via the music shop' card, thus giving the false impression that my GAS is in remission.