dannybuoy

10 hours ago, tayste_2000 said:

Easily the most pointless but I’ve been discussing it with friends.

 

This is an original Sansamp bass di which has all the controls as trim pots internally (to give the appearance of being a di) into a Cranborne Audio Camden EC1

 

Volume was a little hard to control on this one and I would have liked to crank the gain on the Camden but there was no master volume in the chain.

 

Anyway everything is just a combination of circuit magic and distortion.

 

The Sansamp is just a normal clean di and then you activate it and I’ve basically got a bit of drive, rolled off the presence and tried to volume match it (but there is a jump).

 

 

My thoughts, I don’t think I’d go into the studio without my Countryman and this Sansamp now. I’d always look to run clean and spicy.

 

The combo with the Camden feels like I don’t need anything else but combined with the boosts I have there is a great range of tones.

 

The Camden could have been a main part of my rig but the power supply is just horrible.

 

Cranborne thump settings sounds killer. BTW I just picked up an MS-60B+, and its emulation of the BDDI v2 is bang-on.

I think the overall EQ / bass boost is the same. Heard one commenter saying one or the other was more ‘amp-like’, but that’s about it.
I can get the V pretty close with the switch to the right and boosting the presence, but it’s not exact.

Is there really much of a difference between mk1 and mk2?

I sold my original, missed it, picked up a mk2 again after a gap, so never got to A/B them.

Hotone Bass Press or AMT Electronics WH-1B - I preferred both of these to the Dunlop too. The Bass Press is discontinued now though I think. Hotone have a newer wah, but no idea if it’s any good on bass.

Looks like the AMT is still in production though!
https://amtelectronics.com/new/amt-wh-1b/

The recent additions to the Morley range look quite small as in they’d fit on one of the long thin Pedaltrain boards, but they still take up a lot of width.

I have one - currently in a bass that I want to convert back to passive and sell before trying it out in my Sandberg Basic (also a Stingray-like setup). That has 40Hz/550Hz/18kHz controls, and I find boosting 40 adds too much rumble, and there’s not much going at 18kHz when I’m using flats!

The Tone Capsule should be much more usable with 70Hz/500Hz/2.8kHz.

Several years ago, I had the pleasure of playing bass with Phil Manzanera at a wedding reception in his garden when my best friend married his step-daughter! We played a short set (Let’s Stick Together, Love Is The Drug, No Church In The Wild) while the main function band took a break.

10 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

Rare to see a Parker bass come up...

And strangely, Sandberg Basics don't either.

Came here to say Sandberg Basic also - picked one up for about £350 several years ago, I wouldn’t mind another one!

From their site:
 

Quote

Unfortunately our previous manufacturer stopped making strings completely.
We have taken some time to find a new supplier who could continue to make strings to our specifications.

These precision bass strings are NOT simply another company's strings, re-packaged, with yet another label on the outside.
We have taken time to develop a unique range of strings to cater for any playing style.
All our stings are HAND-WOUND here in the UK.

I remember trying their half rounds vs GHS Brite Flats and they were very similar, but not identical.

37 minutes ago, bassist_lewis said:

Anyone see Beetronics' drop their Star Wars custom shop pedals? Some really cool designs there.

Also IdiotBox:

Anyone tried the MS-200D+? Over 150 distortion models, you’d hope some of them might be good for bass.

It can work well in the right setting. I’ve been considering picking up the newish Fender bass reverb since it allows you to filter out the low end from the reverb signal, as you don’t want too much of the low frequencies being reverberated.

You can also use a simple blender pedal as a mixer. I’ve gotten good results sending the dry out of my Sansamp into another preamp, which then goes into the return jack of a One Control Mosquite blender. The Sansamp main out goes into the Mosquite main input, and the Mosquite’s send jack sits unused.

With the blender off, I get pure Sansamp, when engaged I get that mixed with the 2nd preamp in parallel. With the mix control halfway I get a 50/50 blend of each, but you can control the overall mix and volume by adjusting the blend control and master volume of the 2nd preamp.

E.g. set the blend at 10% and whack up the master volume of the 2nd preamp and you’ll get an overall volume boost when engaging.

It can be hard to hear bass distortion in a mix with distorted guitars. The 2 very different pedals that have worked best for me:

SolidgoldFX Beta - a mild overdrive without a blend (no need for one either), but it has a boost in the lows/low mids that helps you to be heard when everything else gets louder. At low volume it sounds kinda muffled/murky, but at high volume it excels where other pedals that sounded great at bedroom levels seemed to disappear in the mix.

Tech21 DP-3X - this splits your signal with a crossover, applying a really punchy compressor to the lows and Sansamp distortion to the top end. If you play quietly, you just hear smooth bass, and when you play more agressively you get distorted high mids coming though. Then you’re punching below and cutting above the midrange where the guitars and vocals typically sit, rather than battling them for the same frequencies.

Try the switch to the right, body and presence at noon, LPF at max. I found that reasonably close to the MkII.

Main difference is the blend, and the bite switch and cab sim buttons.

V1 VT Bass had none of these. The V2 has a cab sim button, but turning off the cab sim also turns off the presence boost, resulting in a darker sound than you had with the cab sim on, which is not what most people (IMHO) would want from this button. But that’s remedied in the DI version, which puts the presence boost on a separate Bite switch.

I really like the blend feature, since I dial in an obnoxious clanky overdrive sound with the character turned up fairly high, but back that off with the blend. Result is kinda like the Geddy Lee pedal, and it’s a tone you can’t get from the original without a separate blender.

You can get the V to sound close to the MkII with the LPF on and the highs/lows boosted. I find the V better at the transparent low gain thing, since you can bypass the LPF and open up the top end more. But I really like the MkII at high gain, and the V doesn’t react in the same way that I find really pleasing with the MkII cranked.

Nice work with the graphs! I prefer the Spark.

There was a b stock one on Bax yesterday...

17 minutes ago, markbunney said:

I love mine and use it all the time. I’ve started to notice that it doesn’t fully mute when I user the tuner though, which is annoying. It’s not the note from the bass coming through, more like a weird pulsing noise.

If it’s on a daisy chain, try it on its own power supply to see if it fixes that.

If your classic punk tone is a P-Bass with a pick, I too would opt for the VT Bass.

Sold my Meatball after acquiring a Fwonkbeta and Discombobulator, but wish I had kept it as it was in mint condition and the prices are only going up!

I prefer fuzz before octave. Then the fuzz doesn’t get bogged down with too much low end and you end up with clean sub bass underneath the dirt. Hardly makes any difference to tracking in my experience, if anything it tracked better!

Filter after fuzz for synth, filter before dirt is more for classic rock tones.

Chorus generally at the end, but whatever sounds best.

Aguilar Storm King is my favourite pedal purchase of the year.

Heard a lot of bad demos and reviews, but I’m a big fan of the Tonehammer which it’s supposed to share similarities with, so gave it a try when one popped up dirt cheap on eBay.

It has some downsides in that it adds hiss no matter what the settings, although I can hardly hear it through my tweeterless cabs. Also the gain knob above 10 o’clock is an unusable fuzzy mess.

But keep that gain around 9 o’clock or below, and the ‘kick’ switch pressed in (it just sounds bad without it) and it’s the most fun overdrive to play with a P + flats. It can get pretty squelchy, and reacts a bit like a cross between a cranked amp and a Prunes & Custard when you dig in. It’s made my face ache from all the bassface it has produced!

And I just snagged a Blumes on eBay!

I could tell you what my worst pedals of 2024 are, but maybe I should wait until I’ve sold them to you lot! 😆

From that same Tonehammer thread back on Talkbass, I understood the AGS switch on the pedal to essentially be similar to having the drive knob at minimum or maximum. E.g. you can crank the drive and still have no drive if the gain is low - increasing the drive kind of lowers the headroom so that the gain knob causes more distortion, as well as gradually bringing in various EQ shifts.

So you can get different mild overdrive sounds - drive set high and gain set low, or drive set low and gain set high, or anywhere in-between.