dannybuoy

It's important to try and listen to your sound in the context of the rest of the band, which is hard to do effectively at high volume rehearsals. I like to play along to studio recordings with different combinations of basses and preamp pedals into headphones to figure out what works best. The last couple of bands I've been in have had a very thick distorted guitar tone (e.g. Les Paul into a cranked Orange tube head). Here I've found it best to use a scooped tone to provide a pillow of low end to underpin the sound, but with a bit of crispy gain up top to add clarity and fill out that upper midrange where the guitarist and vocalist don't often tread. I used a BB1025X with both pickups on which is naturally scooped and growly anyway, into a Darkglass B3K, although the Tech21 DP-3X is my weapon of choice for this tone now. If I'm playing at the jam night down my local, totally different ball game. Often more then one guitar, but usually thinner sounding, and often a higher pitched female vocalist. To slot in here I stay out of the upper mids, go easy on the deep low end and fill out the lower mids with a P-Bass or my Sandberg Basic (a bit like a Stingray), both of which are wearing TI flats. Either straight into the amp or via a low gain drive pedal of a totally different flavour to the other setup. Full range OD with no clean blend is the order of the day here, something that produces a guttural roar from below rather than grind from up top when you dig in, e.g. SFT, BB Preamp, Beta, Agro.

Have you tried the Sub'n'Up? Heard good things about the latency on that, and with it's built in EQ and modulation you could do the 12 string emulation perhaps better than anything!

Finger and thumb, pinch technique! Quite hard to route the upper string through a separate FX chain using that method though!

If you can find a used MkI that is. The MkII isn't quite as good by all accounts and only exists because of EHX's lawyers!

This is the first time that a (mainstream) band has used an octave up in conjunction with that though to pull of such an authentic sounding fake guitar from the bass. Those guys might have great bi-amped tones, but they don't sound like guitars. People are shocked when they find out there is no guitarist in Royal Blood! Anyway, enough of a thread derail this has been!

Good sounding low latency polyphonic octave up still eludes a lot of manufacturers, even the £1K Line6 Helix is nowhere near as good as my £50 Mooer Tender Octaver, which is ripped off of the EHX POG. Then it's not just fuzz you want but a Fender guitar amp sim, even better if over stereo outputs with a bit of delay to simulate his wall of amps (I use a TC Mimiq to cop that). But an extra fuzz stomp of course would be welcome as well as +5th, whammy divebombs... It could definitely fit in a Flyrig-sized device though!

They would make a killing. Fender could give it a go, or otherwise Tech21 as they've shown their prowess squeezing a complex chain into a small pedal with the dUg pedal. But it's the octave up that makes or breaks it and you'd really need EHX for that bit!

Octave, filter, bitcrusher all in one pedal, anyone?

On your marks!

If you haven't tried already, give it a go with yours, keep the lows clean and compressed, send the highs to the rest of the chain then somehow mix them together at the end!

If you were looking at the Warwick Alien, check out the Godin A5 Ultra. I have the A4 and love it, Bass Direct have a used A5 for sale too: http://bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/Godin_A5.html Well worth getting the Ultra version for the extra magnetic pickup, it sounds middy and growly like a fretless 'Ray. Older ones are piezo only. Demo of the A4:

If comparing the two it really comes down to which FX you need. Helix doesn't have a lot of bass drives on offer but you can put a crossover anywhere in the chain and a compressor on your lows for example, so there's a lot of mileage to be had from the guitar drives. The Zoom has some very good filters in it too, plus some more specialist bass drives (BB Preamp, Bass Muff, Blueberry, Sansamp BDDI etc). Then there's the amp models of course - I've not tried the B3n but I'd like to, as I didn't find an amp model in the full fat Helix that I preferred over my analog preamp pedals (VT Bass, Tonehammer etc). I have been tempted to pick up a HX though! The analog delay modelling is amazing, sounds just like my Carbon Copy when pushing it into crazy noise making territory. Plus being able to put a crossover in at 200Hz, compress the lows and only apply FX (including physical pedals) to the highs has become something I'm very interested in since owning the dUg pedal.

Heavy alt rock, goth burlesque frontwoman with tats and panda eye shadow. Makes me think of Evanescence.

TIs are quite middy, but not overly bright. I'm also a fan of Pyramid Gold, similar in sound and feel but with a bit more tension and more low end thud. Both TIs and Pyramids are nickel flats whereas most others are steel as far as I know. I think this makes them smoother both in terms of touch and tone. LaBellas and Chromes for example are a lot brighter sounding and stickier to the touch when new, although they get smoother once worn in. I have some GHS Precision Flats ready to try out next on my P though!

Anyone interested in recreating a dUg style signal chain but with other pedals, you could do a lot worse than to pick this up. It's a dual band compressor that had separate outputs for the high and low bands. So send your highs to a distorted guitar amp for example, or into a distortion pedal then blend back together with the lows with an LS-2 or such. You can also pull off a similar sound with a Helix HX. I was fooling around with the crossovers, compressors, EQs and a Rat model and wasn't far off! Still preferred the dUg though and wasn't prepared to spend hours tweaking it to get there!

Serial looks to be visible on the neck plate, I don't suppose you know what yours was?

You might have had an active buffer stage before it perhaps? Wooly Mammoths lose all their low end if you use an active bass or another pedal going into it, they're designed to be used hooked up directly to passive pickups. There have been clones made with impedance matching circuitry on the front end but they aren't that common.

I've got TIs on mine, they're perfect on that bass. They are relatively expensive but you only have to buy them once - I've had a set on my P Bass for nearly 10 years!

Gave Helix Native another trial run today! Managed to get a reasonable approximation of my Tech21 DP-3X in a short amount of time. I used a crossover block with a compressor on the lows, the highs going to an extra high-pass followed by various distortions/amps, then a low-pass filter. Tried the OC-2 trick with the Pitch Ring Mod, not bad, with a bit more tweaking you could definitely get a useable solo synth sound from it. And holy moly did they get the analog delays going into self oscillation right! That would be a lot of fun mapped to an expression pedal.

I thought the same, every amp pushed well beyond usable saturation. Wasn't sure if it was my input level or just the way it is including on the hardware unit!

Acme do cabs that go down to -6 dB at 31 Hz. They need a LOT of power to drive though. With bass cabs, you can get them to go deep, be small, or be loud... pick any two! Al, get some 18" subs for your next gig, get Cuzzie to lend you his Beefbag and we'll all turn up to experience the true meaning of heft. Of course nobody will be able to hear the other instruments or even focus their vision due to their retinas vibrating, but they are but minor drawbacks to an otherwise excellent plan.

I ddin't eevn sopt the tpyo, it's an aiamnzg fcat taht as lnog as the frist and lsat ltretes are crorcet, we can raed pterty mcuh aynhtnig!

Judging by the OP's avatar, perhaps they are being paired with a Thunderbird though? I've only ever put Flexsteels on a T-Bird, they sound balanced there since the pickups are so dark as it is. The Epi T-Bird I have for sale is wearing a set in fact!

Nobody is arguing against you there, sounds like you have got the wrong end of a very pointy stick that is tightly wedged up your bum! The argument being made was that with a complex sound like a bass or piano, or don't need the fundamental to be able to judge the pitch, in fact if you have a decent enough brain it will fill in the low fundamental so that you will hear it when it isn't there. Which is why you can still pick out a bassline from a tune being played back on a mobile phone speaker. Not only that but many amps will chop off that content too - the M900 has a HPF built in for example, although I don't know what it's specs are!