Jack

A whole 17 hours and no-one answered? Shame on us.

I used to velcro a trs>xlr cable onto my pedal board permanently.

Some thoughts on the gear you've mentioned. I don't have the BB2 but I do have the FR800 which is the BB2 with a 600W amp in. IMO one of them is probably enough for most gigs, I occasionally use two for outside gigs and such but mainly that's for the height rather than the volume. My previous rig was an older model Midget and Compact, and tbh one of them was normally enough too, I think that most people outside of a metal or doom band would be fine with one of the Barefaced 12s. Before that I had a GK Neo 1x12" and 2x12". I could gig with the 2x12" easily, but not normally the 1x12" by itself. This was an older band and before the pa revolution though, so maybe that would be different now.

That's exactlly what I'd be doing. Gone are the days of a Pod and a seperate Bass Pod. The new modellers from Line 6, Kemper, Axe FX, Headrush, etc etc are truly multi purpose. If they're too much money then the new HX Stomp is £400, the Mooer and Valeton stuff is even cheaper.

Basically an external pedal preamp like the ones we're talking about here are all of the controls on the front of your (well, any) amp. Usually at least gain, eq, volume, things like that. What they don't have are the power amp (which makes stuff really loud and drives cabs) or the speaker. Like amps, pedal preamps all have different features (some have more eq, overdrive, whatever) and they all sound different. The Ampeg Scrambler sounds sort of like the Ampeg amps do and the GK Plex sounds very like the GK amps do. Two main uses that I can think of: As an amp replacement - Many gigs these days have big PA system and good monitors, so you don't need to creat any of your own volume. In this case a pedal preamp would give you all of the control over your sound that you need without making you have to carry the power amp and speaker in your combo that you don't need. As an 'effect' in addition to your amp. Your amp is super clean and very high fi. Lets say you join a rock band and you ditch the Rob Allen for a P Bass with rounds, you can put something that sounds 'rocky' like the Sansamp or the Two Notes Le Bass in front of your amp to make your clean amp sound less, well, clean.

To summarise, it looks as though you kind of want a preamp (because they're useful and because why not?), you want something clean and clear, and you probably don't want to spend that much in case it's not for you. May I suggest the catchily-named Studiospares 458190? Great preamp, super-clean, loads of gain, great DI box, usable eq for bass. It needs a polarity adaptor (it's center positive unlike most boss pedals) and you can see the thing from space, but otherwise it's great preamp. Really useful box.

Still doesn't, although 2.7 is right around the corner. It struck me as strange too, but then isn't the sansamp supposed to emulate an SVT? 'Cos there's already an SVT in there. I noticed it's absence but I didn't miss it, too scooped for me.

Hah, I was wondering why peeople were arguing over stereo vs balanced. That makes sense! Yes, to clarify, the HX Stomp has a left and a right output, both of which are balanced TRS jacks and both of which can be set to instrument or line level. Personally, I'd have one that had a 50cm TRX>XLR male cable which would go to FOH and the other would be a TRS>TRS patch lead into a Behringer Mic Preamp to control my FRFR volume. Other people will undoubtedly have different use cases, most of which the stomp should be able to accomodate.

The Avalon is 2u high by half rack width, so that's fairly standard. The Quilter may have to be custom done.

Yeah but 99% of the time it'll be dual mono rather than stereo, so you can send the same signal to both something on stage and the mixer. In that case you could use a balanced line level to a power amp and the other line output to a mixer.

3-hour gig last night with my full-fat rack Helix. I used 2 footswitches, 3 if you include the tuner.

Considering how much other top-flight bass gear can cost, I don't think it's expensive.

The GK clip light is also before the gain control, so it's not unheard of.

Quite. It was a relaly big help for me that one guy in PMT Newcastle is a bass player who gigs with a Helix, he was very informative and very useful. The facebook groups and such are brilliant but not a patch on a hands-on walkthrough from an expert. And PMT felt the benefit of a sale, so they're winners too.

Hmmm, but it needs phantom power and that can sometimes be a problem. I sold my Triton and don't really use my Countryman because of phantom power issues. FWIW there's a Radial SB2 wired into my Helix.

Designacable to 50cm ones for £5 on Amazon. I got one for my GK Plex and one for our 'other' mixer's aux output and they're perfectly fine.

Wireless no, but my argument for the LT was that it does have proper, balanced, line level outputs for driving a power amp or powered speaker. However, I've just RTFM and it appears that the Stomp has balanced outputs too. Slightly annoying tbh!

I'm not in any danger of selling my Helix Rack for this, but I have to admit that if this came out before I had bought any Helix, the Stomp would probably be the one I ended up with. 6 blocks and 3 switches is perfect, you're unlikely to need to turn some blocks off (amp models and compressors, for a start) and when you run out of blocks you just create a new patch. I think the only slight caveat to the stomp is that to be a proper gigging rig I'd have it (YMMV) on a board with a wireless, a proper DI for the PA and a mic pre for my FRFR, and at that point of size and cost you might as well have the LT.

Thanks man, I'lll have to get our singer on to it. I have several OBBM leads already, mostly oddballs like wireless cables and at least one short TRS>XLR. I tend to make my own longer cables, but they're never as good, I should upgrade really. Can anyone point me to the correct heat shrink for standard xlr and jack cables please? I need to mark my own in a better way than using blue cable ties. Can you get any heat shrink that's big enough to fit over the (connected) connector or do you have to disassemble the cable?

Please explain what this is so I can buy one?

Dude, you seem to be taking this personally as if I chaired the committee that decided this. I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm not saying it's what we should all be doing. I'm saying it's what amp manufacturers do and I'm repeating the reasoning that I've heard Bob Lee state before. I like the GK that I mentioned above and I like the TC that you posted, both seem quite clear. Most manufacturers don't bother though.

It's modern not ye olde, but fwiw my 750W GK 1001ii has it very clearly. It's almost certainly better to have more information rather than less, but most just seem to quote some sort of average. I think it's always been this way afaik.

To continue my analogy, my car has 180hp and will do 51mpg. But not at the same time. It's a standard procedure. A 200W RMS amp will likely draw ~300W or more for fractions of a second when you slap a low B and then <5W when it's idling between songs. So what power figure do you put on the back? The maximum, the minimum, an average, a real-world usage?

Because you don't create a pure, constant sine wave with your bass. The average power draw of that amp is 30W due to the fact that a typical bass duty cycle is around 1/8 power. As in, the average output of your amp is around 1/8th of what it's capable of. Imagine what fuel consumption figures you'd have to quote when selling cars if you measured their fuel consumption driven flat out. You don't, you measure the car in something that approximates real life use rather than full-tilt-boogie.

I don't see how that could do any damage to the amps. Excessive heat could likely melt the glue in the cabinets at some points and maybe reflow the solder in the amp but surely for anything like that it would have be actually in the burner. I always try not to leave gear anywhere that I wouldn't to hang around in myself, so on that basis I'd imagine if you could survive happily in the cupboard then your stuff could too. Most proper electrical gear has an operating and storage temperature range in the manual. They say something like 'operating 5-30oC and storage 0-40oC' or whatever. As for the basses, I'm sure it's not hot enough to do any damage again but obviously they're sensitive to temperature variations more than absolute heat. I could see how hot cupboard>freezing cold outside>hot car>freezing load in>hot venue might cause some setup, tuning and intonation issues. Maybe. Realistically this probably isn't that different from what most of us do every winter anyway, just that your cupboard is a little warmer than where most of us keep our gear. EDIT - This is my 1000th post! And my 3rd actually useful one....