fretmeister

I play out for about 3 hours per week. The rest of the time I play at home. I love getting new music to try for my own advancement. I think I would be very wary of turning my love of the bass into a job. Bass is my stress relief and it is something I do for me and not other people. Turning my stress release into a job that might cause stress would be err, distressing.

I'm trying to cut down. I keep looking at my ancient Status Energy and wondering if I should move it on. I only ever play 5 strings now, but that old Status and I did years of gigs.

I've given in and ordered a second one.

Thanks chaps.

My main bass doesn't have any on the board face, and the side ones are so tiny that if I haven't got glasses on I can't see them anyway. That's the answer. Poke out your eyes!

I think the AX8 only has one path. No bass friendly split signals.

Do they exist? I've had Snarks and the little Planet Waves thing - but all seem to be awful on the B. Are there any that work?

1: that is lovely. 2: Anyone aged 40 or under who says "now or never" needs beating with their lovely new bass. Smeg I feel old.

[quote name='Sonic_Groove' timestamp='1464175305' post='3057182'] Can those flashing foot-switches be turned to static or is that some mode He has got it in?? Brendan [/quote] That's probably camera frame rate issues. Usually none of them flash unless you set one to be a tap tempo. You can also pick the ring colour and whether it is off/on for the light or dim/bright. The scribble strip (the name of each switch) can be set as well.

Probably the best demo so far https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQUmE0TfC4I Nice comparison of regular amps and the unit too. And you can load after market IRs too. Personally I like the stock ones, but whatever floats your boat!

Boss LS-2 is by far the easiest. Good buffer in the pedal and separate volume controls for each part of the signal.

I'm using a Puma 300 with mine, and it's brilliant.

The UI is really good. The modelling across the other products, Helix, Axe Fx, Kemper are all very good now and I think that is just personal preference, but excessive menu scrolling does my head in. The Helix screen shows you the signal path. You just use a joystick / button thing to pick a space, click it and then insert the fx / amp / cab / ir / whatever into that spot. Then there are 6 knobs on the bottom that become the controls for that individual item, so controls can be adjusted the old fashioned way. The footpedals are even touch sensitive so you can just touch them to show the controls for that individual item without actually turning that item on / off. Each footswitch can be assigned to do 8 things at once - from changing a drive parameter on an amp, to simply turning some things on while turning others off, or use as a momentary to speed up a rotary cab. The expression pedal can be used for wah or volume or to change any other parameter - or more than 1 at once. So you could increase fuzz at the same time as increasing reverb mix. Some users have added the Source Audio Reflex midi expression controller to be able to do extra things - like running 2 wah's at once, but in opposite directions (I don't know why either), or controlling LFO. It also has 4 loops so external pedals can be used and placed anywhere in the signal chain. The loops can either be used as simple Send and Return in the same place, or can be used to send, miss a block, then return so bypass other things at the same time. The outputs can be configured so, for example, the XLR have cab sims, but the 1/4 inch doesn't. It's just a hugely fun bit of kit that is dead easy to use. And it now has a decent PC / Mac editor too.

Ah sorry I thought you meant user made patches, not the Kemper sample thingy. Not in the Helix, but the software dudes haven't said "never" either.

[quote name='charic' timestamp='1464100290' post='3056548'] The UI is a huge selling point for the helix, can it do the amp modelling aspect of the other two (ie. someone uploads a good mesa sample and everyone can use) [/quote] Yes. The L6 site has thousands of user made patches. Anyone can up or download. You can search by artist, genre, or rating. Etc.

Why has no one said "assassination" yet?

Helix. It's brilliant. And the UI is so far ahead of the others it makes the instruction manual redundant.

[size=4][color=#34495E][font=Arial, Verdana][font=inherit]BBC are building a virtual orchestra.[/font][/font][/color] [color=#34495E][font=Arial, Verdana]So you pick your instrument and your level, download the music (tab and fly sh*t available), video your part and upload it.[/font][/color] [color=#34495E][font=Arial, Verdana]Then the editors make up the piece from all the bits.[/font][/color][/size] [color=#34495E][font=Lato, sans-serif][size=4][font=Arial, Verdana][size=4][font=inherit][size=3][url="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3p1V08LHhj0XKVmTwqV216D/take-part-in-the-virtual-orchestra"]http://www.bbc.co.uk...rtual-orchestra[/url][/size][/font][/size][/font][/size][/font][/color] [color=#34495E][font=Lato, sans-serif][size=4][font=Arial, Verdana][size=4][font=inherit][size=3]I'm going to give it a go. [/size][/font][/size][/font][font=inherit][size=3]There is a bass guitar part, and also double bass too.[/size][/font][/size][/font][/color]

I've got a couple of octave pedals, but I don't wan't to be having to turn them on for single notes when I need them. For some pieces the timings would be a pain - on / off / on / off etc in a run.

In terms of people playing the instrument and thus customer base, bass is secondary. But there are many pros using the Fractal Axe FX for bass now, and at launch that was similarly lacking for bassists. The Helix is a brand new product that gets updated, just like the Axe Fx. Even comparing with the Pod XT doesn't really work as the extra packs weren't available until long after the unit was released. There is an octave and harmoniser effect in the Helix so that is there. While there aren't any bass specific drives yet Line 6's own "Ideas Scale" website has loads of people asking for them. And the existing drives can all be run in parallel with a clean signal, or even another drive pedal. One of my patches has 2 Muffs stacked into each other, in parallel with the preamp only from a Peavey 5150 (so using the preamp as a pedal, rather than the whole amp model), and then another clean sound underneath all of that. Then there is the rather powerful EQ and compressors too. I think there is a tendency to look at the guitar models and think it won't work on bass, but the Helix is so flexible that it's probably more useful to think of all the models just as components without being instrument specific.

Filter first for me too. Otherwise the compressor can shut down the transients needed to trigger the filter properly. With extreme compression settings sometimes the filter won't do anything at all.