SumOne

I'm back and forth with these types of pedals all the time. Having sold the Helix FX I've started considering if the Stomp might be better as it could replace my amp/cab sim, tuner, and EQ pedals! I'll probably get a C4 again at some point too as it makes some great sounds but I'll need to accept that it needs a midi controller and a different mindset to get the most of it. My response to the OPs question should be that I'm in no position to answer: I'm fickle and need someone to talk me out of constant pedal buying and selling!

Let me here you say 'whooaaa'! ....wheel it up a couple of times before going into:

Heavy:

I have the same mentality - playing Bass I just want a solid box with a big button on it to turn on that effect and some simple easily visible controls to see what settings it is on. But seeing as you often get a lot more for your money and boardspace with digital/multi FX pedals I have tried quite a few of them (Zoom CDR, Helix FX, Source Audio Aftershock C4 Spectrum Gemini) so I really want to like them but only the Gemini is still on my board. I went for the Helix FX over the Stomp as it can be used in the traditional 'one footswitch per effect' sort of way and it has 2x FX loops to put your other pedals into various positions in the signal chain, and it is a bit cheaper (especially as a lot of Stomp users seem to buy extra midi controllers), it loses out on the amp and cab sims of the Stomp though. Being able to combine effects and routing options that you wouldn't usually do is a big benefit and I found that the Helix FX can mostly replace Tuner, EQ, Compressor, most Distortion, Looper, Switcher (FX Loop switching pedal), Chorus, Reverb, Delay. But it often didn't do the job quite as well as a decent stand-alone pedal equivalent e.g. couldn't make it sound quite as good as my Fuzz pedal (MXR Brown acid), or quite as warm sounding as my Compressor (FEA Opti-FET), and it doesn't do synth or envelope filter sounds very well. The biggest drawback for me though is the physical interaction. e.g. you don't get a visual display of compression like you do with a lot of compressor pedals, or for effects you can't look down to instantly see/adjust your effect settings quite as easily as a physical pedal (it's not that difficult, but you need to go onto that effect and sometimes scroll screens to see all the settings applied- rather than just glancing down at a pedal with physical controls for each parameter). So I'd say it's good, but not quite as good as having the physical pedals....but then again they do cost probably £1,000 in total rather than £360 so I still think it's a decent good value piece of kit.

1950, first ever Ska tune?... or certainly a big influence. This was a big tune Coxone played in the 50s (while keeping it's identity secret) and rival soundman Duke Reid was after it for years - revealing he'd got it at a soundclash. Coxone later set up Studio One and produced music by the Skatalites where you can assume he asked them to make similar tunes. I got the story from the excellent book 'Bass Culture: When Reggae was King'

I've seen them live and they were really good. You just focus on Jason Williamson who is a great frontman, I'm all for seeing full bands but I imagine they would just fade into the background with a frontman like him.

Treble down, Bass up, that's the way we like to pluck! I'm getting quite into using a foam mute for the early Ska sound.

I had the Bass Clone, it was good - more in your face than the Boss CEB-3. The Boss is probably better if you want subtle chorus as you don't hear much effect with the settings below 50% and the adjustable low filter means you can also be quite precise about only getting a slight chorus effect on higher notes while leaving the low notes unaffected. I think I preferred the Bass Clone tone though, it's not that different but does a 'bigger' effect - not so good if you want to be subtle though. I'd be happy getting either of them again, both were good but for non-subtle 80's cheese the Bass Clone is probably better (and a bit cheaper).

I don't have Apple music but the BBC have been doing a fair bit of spatial audio stuff. The best things I've heard it used so far are things like documentaries with background street noise, and when voices move around, stuff like this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06w66lm I expect it will work well with atmospheric/ambient music and electronic stuff, probably doesn't suit all types of music though. This hour of electronic music spatial mixes is good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000tljv ...only available for 3 more days though. Machinedrum's mix from 35 minutes is excellent but I'm not convinced from those mixes that I could tell it was binaural recording rather than just stereo recording with a lot of panning.

Bobbo Shanti 'Poor people must work' 30-33m is my favourite part. I always like Paul St Hilaire's stuff (he's 38-42m on that Se mi yah mix). His album 'Unspecified' is decent:

Rhythm & Sound are great for relatively modern dubby stuff (or their stuff as Basic Channel is more Dub Techno). This is a mix of all the vocal versions of their 'see me yah' riddim.....hypnotic stuff.

Kanka does some decent modern (relatively) Steppas stuff:

I think the x-over/low filter is pretty much essential option for a Bass chorus unless you like the wobbly low end seasick type sound all the time. I had an EHX Small Clone which was great at doing the Nirvana 'Come as you are' tone, not a particularly subtle chorus pedal though and mine developed an issue where it didn't play well with certain pedals (gave a big volume boost for some reason ) and then stopped working, that doesn't seem to be a common complaint though so I think I was unlucky. I miss the tone of the EHX and might get another one one day. I then had a Boss CEB-3 which was good, more subtle than the EHX, it has more control of the x-over (a 'low filter' knob instead of a switch) and it has the usual good Boss build quality. It's a good pedal, but not particularly exciting. I then got a Source Audio Gemini which is decent, it can sound very similar to the EHX and Boss but if all you are after is chorus then you can save some £ and get one of them instead of the Gemini and not be missing much as far as chorus goes (they are less tweakable, but their chorus sounds are just as good). The big advantage of the Gemini is that it can can also do Phaser, Flanger, or even just be set for a particular EQ or filter. It doesn't have a chorus x-over/low filter as such but does have a 'low retain' option that can be set in the editor, and it has a clean blend so although I think technically the low end is still having chorus applied it is mixed with the original low end so doesn't sound so wobbly/seasick. I'm not always the biggest Source Audio one series fan (having owned the C4, Spectrum, Aftershock and sold/returned them all for various reasons) but I think this works very well for it's form and function with all the knobs still doing what you expect them to do as you change presets and 6 presets being an alright amount without needing additional midi controllers, I only used the editor for about a week to get things sorted and haven't touched it since.

It's early days for me but I'm pretty sure these are the answers: Looking at the specs it says 96 projects with 96 patterns per project. Does that mean 96 songs with 96 patterns available for each song? Yes Can you use the same pattern for different projects? Alternatively can you copy a pattern from one project to another? Yes Are all those patterns and projects stored on-board without having to load from and external source? Yes (one possible issue is that the non-expandable internal memory isn't huge, but it's not the recording of patterns that takes up much memory - it's the storage of samples, so doing things like using mono samples and short one-hit samples helps manage that). How easy is it to switch from one project to another? Fairly easy, there are pattern and track buttons and you need to use the function button to get to the secondary button controls.

Nice one. I'm not much of a manual reader usually but it looks like it's got a few things like this going on that I'll need to read up on how to do. So far so good with it though, each time I think there's a bit of a limitation there seems to be a way of dealing with it. I think the main limitations will be: Small screen...but it does the job fine. Velocity pads a bit small and not sensitive enough...but they are fine unless you plan on doing a lot of live MPC style finger drumming. Slightly limited FX...but perhaps as I dig more I'll find other things. And there are workarounds like applying FX to a sample on your DAW before sending it over. Not a huge memory, and it's not expandable....but should be plenty for one-hit type samples. Can't sample directly...but it's simple to drag and drop from computer. ....but adding those things would all probably make it bigger, more expensive, and more complicated so I don't thing they are essential, and not really things I'd expect for something this size and cost- I'm just nit-picking really. Overall I'm impressed.

Nice one, I hadn't realised that (apparently it wasn't available to begin with so older one's need an update for it to work, but mine already had the update applied). Individual samples easily assigned to each step of each of the 6 tracks opens up a lot of possibilities and is a big upgrade. The only downside is that it is still only 6 tracks, so maximum of 6 sounds playing at any one time (which is probably plenty) and the fx assigned for each track is applied to all samples within that track. That's fine, just might need a bit of planning sometimes.

Nice doing business with Paul. Sold a pedal and all was good. Cheers

Crappy digital sounding claps are one of the foundations of drum machines!

I'm impressed with the Elektron Samples so far. Played about for a couple of hours and it's intuitive enough that I made the attached loop without needing to look up any instructions (it doesn't come with any). All good quality built-in sounds and it's a fairly straight-forward work flow but I'll need to look up on the online manual how to do more complex things and still need to figure out how to import samples. Although it's plastic I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing nowadays- this thick type of plastic is probably nearly as strong as metal. All the knobs and buttons seem well made, the whole thing feels well built and fairly strong, I reckon it could take a drop on the floor. Nowhere near as rugged as something like a Boss stompbox but I'd trust it at a gig if it was somewhere off the floor. It's smaller than an A4 piece of paper and about an inch thick. Negatives I've found: 6 Channels is okay for drum loops, but is limited for doing full tunes. (e.g. Kick, toms, snare, hi-hat, cymbal, clap...and you're done, no room to add anything else). The effects are fine and they are intuitive to use - amounts can are applied per channel but reverb size/tone and delay time/feedback are global so it's just the amount of it you apply per channel chat can be altered individually. There aren't loads of effects and they are relatively limited if you're used to using DAWs and having things like 5 different types of Reverbs to fine-tune. Chorus and Echo would be nice to have. The pressure sensitive finger-drumming pads aren't sensitive enough- they need quite a hard whack to get full amount (perhaps there is a way to adjust that, all I've found though is that they can be set on full velocity for all hits - no adjustment to sensitivity) and they are small if you want to do two hand drum rolls. Screen could do with being bigger. Midi in/out come with adapters from mini jack to midi, probably not an issue but it's a bit more flimsy and an extra connection than if they'd just put in midi connectors. I'm pretty sure you can't sample directly (e.g. via a line-in or USB in) need to import from a computer, which is fine but breaks up the spontaneity a bit. That all sounds a bit negative, but overall for £250 I think this is a good fun piece of kit for creating drum patterns (and hopefully for importing/triggering samples) and I'm pretty sure I'll keep it. The restrictions are actually probably good for fast workflow and not getting too bogged down in things. Can also buy a battery handle that could be useful for times like flights and train journeys, and a protective cover. Will report back in a couple of weeks once I've used it more.

The Korgs look good, I had a Korg monotron that was fun (although the headphone output didn't last long). Also had a Teenage Engineering PO-12 which was decent for electronic sounding stuff. I've got an Elektron Samples arriving this morning, looking forward to it!

Here's a good one from Bob Marley that doesn't get much attention:

It would seem I like quite varied music (Dub/Reggae, Funk, Stoner/Psychedelic Rock, Drum n Bass, Dubstep, Techno) but there is something linking them all that makes them similar in many ways - they are usually hypnotic/psychedelic/abstract and driven by the rhythm and are often more about building a mood rather than being catchy tunes with sing-along chorus. I think for that reason people should be open to listening to a lot of styles because quite often it seems that different styles of music have been written by people trying to convey similar feelings in the music - just due to time/technology/culture etc they have conveyed them in a different way (a bit like speaking different languages).

I prefer their earlier stuff before they went commercial.

Yeah, I spend all day working on a Laptop, it's not very inspiring to then go back to using a Laptop to make music.....always seems to need an update or some other faff and even if it all works fine it's just not much of a fun/hands-on way of making tunes. I 'm hoping that a hardware drum machine/sequencer with strike pads will be a good starting point for a bit of inspiration in making tunes- quite hands-on and easily editable while playing Bass along to it to make the foundation of a tune, then use DAWs just for the boring bits at the end to finish things off.