dannybuoy

If you want something to fatten and warm up your sound, try a DHA, EHX Blackfinger, or Jacques Fat Burner. For something more transparent get the Demeter Compulator (expensive) or BBE Opto Stomp (cheap). I'm looking to get either a Fat Burner or Compulator at some point...

[quote name='thisnameistaken' post='241068' date='Jul 16 2008, 04:56 PM']Yeah I had a look around to see what else was available but AFAIK the Moog is a 50Kohm pot, and the Meatball filter will close with around 20Kohm so the Bespeco is a better match. I imagine if I had the Moog only about half the pedal travel would do anything.[/quote] I'm not sure if I got this right in my head but,for my purposes at least, the resistance doesn't matter. There are 3 connections on the TRS cable, connected to 3 points in the potentiometer. One connects to +9v, one to ground, and the third returns a voltage between 0v and 9v depending on where the pedal is. Of course I may have got all this wrong, but I'm going to do a bit of checking with a multimeter before I commit to soldering everything down!

About that Bespeco expression pedal, I was considering one myself, but have just ordered a Moog EP-2 pedal from Digital Village for £28.99. Looks a lot better quality and is still pretty cheap. I've just received the bits I need to go ahead and mod my Tonefactor 442 filter for manual expression control, fingers crossed I don't cock it up!

Make sure it's not your cables first of all. If you're going through 2 poor quality cables you'll notice a difference. I don't know about the Sadowksy, but there are definitely a few pedals out ther marketed as true bypass that actually aren't. I know what you mean though with some non-TB effects; I love my Bad Monkey pedal, but it does alter the tone in bypass. It makes it sound colder and I prefer the natural sound of the bass hooked up to the amp in this situation. Funnily enough though, that buffered signal from the bypassed pedal makes the next pedal in line, an Earthbound Supercollider, absolutely sing! The fuzz sound is so much fuller than just using the the Supercollider alone. So I guess it's swings and roundabouts...

Try a Godlyke Power Pump. It's similar to the Diago 18v adaptor but has variable voltage. Also, have you tried the DHA at 9v? It's supposed to accept 9-12v but sound 'weaker' with 9v. You may be happy with the sound though, so give it a shot. They ship to the UK direct form the Godlyke site, or you might find a distributor over here.

Digital Village are selling the VT Bass at the moment and are willing to price match the Thomann.de price (around £125) according to someone at TB. I've got one order from the US for $150 + $20 shipping, which works out at about £85 if I manage to dodge import taxes (I've been lucky so far with everything I've ordered from overseas!).

Yeah, there's an active thread over at Talkbass about the Behringer clone, apparently people are loving it. There was another thread on there with sound clips comparing it to the real thing and people found it hard to tell which was which. Still, I'm going for the VT Bass instead (when I can eventually get hold of one).

I get noise from my Zoom B2 when on the daisy chain, it works fine with it's own power supply though. I think it may be some kind of earthing issue, as when on the daisy chain it's really noisy through headphones, but pretty silent when hooked up to my audio interface.

Sounds to me like the OP wanted to make his own though!

Also [url="http://thebassgallery.com"]thebassgallery.com[/url] in London, they told me end of June for stock, so they might even have them in now.

Fair enough - it's just that sometimes we hear that question and it turns out they're using a crap bass through a 20W practice amp and trying to fix it with pedals! I suggest a DHA VT1 overdrive (or even the compressor). By turning the gain down the signal remains clean yet still manages to add great dollops of lard to your tone. If you go down the dual amp route, linking them up with a stereo chorus pedal on subtle settings gets great results.

Dave, what do you have to say on the matter of active vs. passive DIs in the chain I was talking about above? I thought I would be best off with a passive DI like the Radial JDI or ProDI.

I'm looking at DIs at the moment; I intend to get a VT Bass as an amp modeller going into some kind of stereo modulation and was looking at the Radial ProD2 passive stereo DI box. A headphone amp would also be very useful in this kind of setup, so I'm watching to see what you come up with!

If you don't have fat tone without pedals, maybe you need a new bass and/or amp! What are you using? Also, for maximum phatness run your Multicomp in tubesim mode.

I want to hear what it's like after a heavy fuzz (in the fx loop and with the exp pedal) using the LP filter. I love my Supercollider going into my 442 filter, I hope I can get similar tones with one of these! Hopefully you've got a big muff or similar lying around...

Nice Meatwad! Has it got the switch added to retain the fx loop in bypass mode? I'm after one of these myself - I thought if you wanted an expression socket you had to make do with a stereo fx send/return socket and use a Y-cable - or is having the exp socket on the bottom a custom mod too? Also, did you get stung for import duty/charges?