dannybuoy

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I've only messed with Helix Native on my laptop, but I'd definitely want one of the models with amp sims instead of the HX Effects. After playing around with some crossover setups, sending the lows to a compressor and the highs to some distortion, I got some great results using the various guitar amps, and there's tons of them to choose from.

Haven't you got 3 already?!

The SA comparison wasn't meant to be be an apples-to-apples one (Tech21 easily wins in the tone dept IMHO), just showing that MIDI presets can be done cheaply. I get that digital control of analog circuits is altogether different. But that's something that was pulled off with the programmable BDDI that I can get for £181, and the extra preset count and MIDI port don't add up to make it worth the price overall - to me, I hasten to add!

The TC has a killer compressor and EQ, but no amp/cab sim as such, and the drive sounds are said to be somewhat mediocre. Zoom B3 - lots of amp models but I found them all to be murky and boomy with the cab sims on. Zoom B3n - no DI but some better sounding amps, and a killer Darkglass B3K sim. I never got on with the Zoom products, always found the menus annoying and they never quite nailed the tones I was after, so given those options I'd probably opt for the Spectradrive. Or if you want a tubey/dirty amp sim tone, you could do much worse than pair a TC Spectracomp with a Tech21 VTDI /Sansamp!

Fat, dirty, subdued highs, minimal EQ, tons of power... sounds a bit like my Orange Terror Bass! Anyone compared them?

I'm not a fan of the Source Audio drives either, I was just illustrating that MIDI presets, or digital control of analog circuits doesn't justify the astronomical price. They could have sold this for £300, or pushed it at £400. £500 is just taking the Fosters.

Source Audio can manage to cram 128 presets into their pedals that sell for around the £150 mark. Tech21 have a programmable Bass Driver that's under £200. Those extra presets do not justify the cost. The Darkglass Ultras are already pushing the limits of what people will pay for a pedal, but at least they have clean blend, headphone out, aux in, DI out, and an IR loader. I hope they sell well, and for anyone that's a massive fan of the PSA-1 but wants it in pedal form no matter the price, they will be over the moon. As for me:

I'm not sure if it's a mistake, or just some shops taking advantage of supply and demand. If they only managed to get a handful of units, it's likely there are enough Steve Harris fans out there to buy them at £399! £299 sound like the right price, it's about what it costs from the US if you add on shipping and customs, plus the dUg pedal is around £249 and there's nothing there to justify the massive hike over that one.

That line of TC pedals are rehoused Behringer circuits, the Forcefield is apparently the CL9!

Maybe master vol/tone and a 3-way selector switch? Never tried a double P, but on a Jazz I found I only ever used either pickup soloed or both up full!

I used to think I didn't need a compressor either due to always using a Sansamp or similar. But overdrive simply squashes/limits the overall volume, it doesn't have a delayed reaction like a compressor. Like I was describing with my experience of multi-band compression and the DP3X, a compressor can reshape the volume 'envelope' of each incoming note so that rather than squash the attack, it can accentuate it. This graph shows what I mean:

I never got on with compressors until I tried multi-band ones. Now I treat it as an essential! The trouble is you need fast attack time to catch the high-mid peaks of an agressive pluck/pop/slap. But that neuters the thump of the lows. Release/ratio/knee/etc settings would probably have different ideal parameters for highs and lows also for someone who knows what they're doing. The Cali Compact Bass has a HPF side chain so that you can filter out the lows from the signal detection, but that doesn't go far enough IMHO. The compressor built into the Tech21 DP3X only affects the low end when running in mix mode. Rather than squash the life out of the signal, it enhances the pop you hear/feel by shaping the volume of each note to let the initial peak through before it clamps down. It's quite an audible effect, but those settings only work well on the low end! The TC Spectracomp has a similar thing going on, but with additional bands to handle separate compression settings for the mids and highs. It only has one knob but an insane number of parameters to tweak under the hood via the app.

B3n £117 for Black Friday here: https://www.muziker.co.uk/zoom-b3n

The new MXR Vintage Bass Octave might be an option too, I hear it's pretty close to the OC-2. With any luck they might have cloned the tone but not the volume drop!