dannybuoy

@Wolverinebass multiband you say? I’ll have to check out the manual then! Lack of a blend or crossover etc had made me less interested in this.

Certainly more pedalboard friendly than the original. Although you could always put velcro on top of one of these and use it instead of a Pedaltrain:

KFC Bargain Bucket works as well!

Tech21 SH1, the new Steve Harris signature? I have one and it has. A very mid-focussed clanky tone.

Yes, the core of that tone is hands, strings, and pickups. But if you have a bass with old strings, darker sounding pickups, etc, you can kick it into that ballpark with certain preamps. EQ to boost the high mids, and drive to fake the missing harmonic content. The Tech21 stuff is the best I've found for making a dull bass growl. The new Darkglass Harmonic Booster might be worth a look too. It's a clean preamp from them this time.

VTDI or SH1 - both have a clean blend, and on the dirt side, a switchable treble boost and midrange control that are placed before the clipping section. So even if you have the gain set low so it's not obviously overdriven, you have some mild clipping of the mids and treble giving you some extra harmonics, or in other words, growl!

Tech21 supplies my growl.

If you want a bridge from a 1025 or 735, you been contact Yamaha direct to order spare parts, but they won't be cheap.

The Joe Dart signature bass is basically a passive Stingray/Sterling. I also very much like my Sandberg Basic in passive mode. Especially with flatwounds!

The cheaper H2 comes with the mic attachment btw, when the H2n came out they made it a chargeable extra!

According to Steve, it sounds like Steve.

I've no idea! Couldn't care less about that. But I suppose it must do, it has his name on it after all!

Very short review: It's very good. Closest to the VTDI from the existing lineup, but with a darker speaker sim, tighter lows, more low mids, and a lower frequency on the treble EQ. Very flexible control of the mids and very punchy. Sounds more like a real amp than the other pedals.

I spent a day or two messing with Helix Native but couldn't conjure up anything remotely close to my Tonehammer or VTDI. Hence why I never bought one! I could however get pretty close to the DP-3X by combining a crossover, compressor and the newly added BDDI sim!

That HiWatt model sounds great on bass though!

Hard to make that kind of call based on the demos we've had, where they're all in the mix rather than isolated. I bet Tim Starace could've nailed most of those same sounds with the VTDI! I'll give it a go direct to headphones later to see how it fares.

Still showing as £299 pre-ordered from Guitar Guitar, I think most would like to save £100 and wait! Had a brief play, sounds good - only subtle differences to the VTDI and YYZ though, lots of crossover and similar tones to be gotten from all 3 units. Will delve into it more over the coming days.

Let's just say I am very surprised! I had to pay a bill after all, so didn't work out much cheaper than buying over here. I've ordered many pedals from them in the past and got away with it! Should be arriving today.

But that's not cheap or easy to find used. EHX Small Stone is great as mentioned, although quite dark, the EHX Bad Stone and MXR Phase 90 are a tad brighter sounding.

Oh come one, with a user name like that, there's only one choice!

Here's one with one of the aforementioned pickups:

A lot of people put hot rail mini humbuckers in theirs for a beefier tone, and you can get cheap ones on eBay for about a tenner!

Nowadays, I think they are equivalent. The Classic Vibes used to be built in a different factory in China, now I think they're all built in the same factory as the VMs. In fact a quick search turned up hardly any VMs for sale, they must have been discontinued!

The USA Geddy Lee has a much thicker neck apparently, that might be more up your street, but obviously costs slightly more than the Squier!