robiredale

Definitely. The DG marketing vids all make it seem as though you plug in your bass and instantly sound like Jon Stockman, Jacob Umansky or whoever else is in the video. Not the case in my experience! The pre's on your basses will help, but they're usually quite broad cuts and boosts. The Source EQ2 pedal (which I don't touch once set up) allows much more surgical cuts, which is what I've ended up with to get to where I wanted. You can also save a preset for each bass on that pedal, so all your instruments can go into the amp at roughly the same level - meaning that your comp/drive settings can be pretty much left alone. Good luck, its worth it in the end!

I've got an AO900 and love it. Have also had all flavours of Darkglass distortion (X, MT and AO) in various pedal formats. My take is that the reality of Darkglass stuff is that there is a very large overlap between the different flavours of distortion. My preference is AO because its got an organic quality to me that's missing from the others, and a less extreme "baked in" EQ (though I do my own EQ in addition to what Darkglass provides - see below). AO sits better in a band situation for me. I found the MT to have less presence in a band situation without really pushing the mids (which gives this "honky" quality to me), and the X (whilst the solution I thought I wanted on paper) I could never get to sound very "natural". That said it is an extremely powerful tool, and I love the Neural DSP plugin that emulates it (Parallax). That's my go-to for recording bass. In terms of clank - on paper the X should do that the best. I found though that the AO is more pleasing for my application. A bit of light drive in the Alpha voicing should do this too - though obviously it will not leave the low end alone. To be honest though I used to think this was important, but now believe it is not as important for me as I thought. I have found that to "unlock" the sound I'm after, whichever flavour of Darkglass product I'm using, is usually a case of appropriate gain staging/EQ before and/or after the drive circuit, rather than endlessly cycling through the Darkglass product library. So for instance, one of the reasons that Dingwall's sound great through them is that they're hot - about 9dB hotter than my Ibanez. Dingwall's also have some mid information that other basses do not have. I'd recommend that rather than chopping in your amp, buy a Source Audio EQ pedal first and experiment with it. I have one before my signal goes into the amp, and it makes a huge difference to my ears. All that said the X900 looks cool. But I have no plans to get rid of the AO900. Happy to brain dump further on my experiences if it helps

Scott sold me Source EQ2 pedal. Item was in great condition as described, fairly priced, and posted quickly. Scott is a friendly and helpful guy and would happily buy/sell with him again.

thanks very much, that's really kind and helpful of you to share. much appreciated. what i will do is forward that onto the custom pickguard producer and see if that is enough for them to produce something. cheers!

If anyone with one of these would be able to remove their pickguard and create a template for me to order one for myself, I would probably love you forever. I've got an NG2 5/2 that I'd like to run in bridge/neck pickup configuration, but the NG2 pickguard won't fit as that instrument runs a bridge/middle pickup configuration. Any help would be gratefully received. Cheers!

Bass straight in, all processing in Reaper. I generally use Neural DSP's stuff for my tone, I'm a metal/rock player primarily and use Darkglass stuff live, so this works very well for me. I produce music for my main band and much prefer having flexibility to make decisions later about tone. This suits the way we like to write and record. Many of the compressors and EQs I use after this are Reaper's stock plugins, they're excellent. Especially the compressors.

I sold Jake the Keeley - glad its worked out for you! I never noticed the noise reported above for what its worth, and thought it was a very good piece of kit. I've tried a few over the years, and much prefer simple ones. I had an Empress Bass Comp for a bit - awesome bit of kit, but too complex for my tiny brain. My two recent faves are Trace Elliot's dual comp on their Transit B (crossover freq is 330hz I think), and even simpler, the one knob compressor on the Darkglass Amps - absolutely amazing. Best one knob solution I've seen for my applications.

Bought a distortion pedal from Dave - top communication, item exactly as described, quick postage and fair price. Cheers!