funkydoug

HI folks, been experimenting with a Boss ME80 as an all in one solution. In short: it’s great. I wanted to find an all-in-one box to that could satisfy 90% of my situations (gigs, sessions, jams etc), which include bass and guitar duties but my primary focus is definitely bass. The ME80 does lots for guitarists - obviously - but on bass it ticks an awful lot of boxes too: the clean preamp is very transparent and can be pushed into tubey goodness with the gain dial. The other preamps aren't ideal for bass but the 'clean' setting gives a great tone and doesn't cut bass frequencies in a bad way (see below). the cab sim introduces an HPF at about 100hz and a LPF at about 4khz. The clean preamp can be set to be pretty much flat, and boosting the bass dial boosts nicely and quite widely around 125hz, which means it sounds great for a lot of bass tones, but maybe not for those wanting loads of very low frequency energy in their sound. I've done spectral analysis of it in my DAW and it looks like this (pretty flat between the HPF and LPF) when bass is at noon, mids at 1pm and treble at 10am (running white noise through it): without the cab sim there is much more very low & very high end; it becomes fully flat. The cab sim comes on when something is plugged in to the headphones and affects all outputs. As a result, in a live situation you could either run without cab sim (and therefore without the HPF / LPF shoulder in the chart above) or plug in some phones or a dummy jack to engage them if you want the HPF and LPF. The OD section can be used very nicely on bass. I like the blues setting as a drive / distortion that also is very flat in response. The boost option is also flat but just adds more gain to drive the amp sim. I've not played with other OD settings as they're either not my bag (the metal stuff) or cut bass (overdrive setting is a BOSS SD1, so it cuts a lot of bass, as does the TScreamer) There is a tuner, noise gate, and flexible expression pedal, aux in and phones out. The eq section (the optional extra one, that can also be used for effects) is a cut& boost eq that we are more familiar with. Nice to have both options, and for it to be stomp-able. The other obvious thing which I really like is that this feels a bit analogue, in that there are no menus or complications and it can be run in manual mode - what you see is what you get. The bottom left pedal section has a lot in it for bass - a passable OC2 clone, and a good, simple compressor. Unfortunately it is one or the other as they can't be used together. I can live with what though (I did say I wanted a one box solution for 90% of gigs, not 100%). I like it. It has a lovely clean tubey kind of sound and there is no noticeable latency at all. The amp sim has the mild baked-in compression effect that you'd find in most guitar amps. As a result, the huge dynamic spikes that a high-end, high-headroom bass preamp can throw at you are compressed a bit, but not in a bad way. For me that's a bonus. I think if you really wanted to preserve a very large dynamic range then you'd have to switch off the preamp (in which case you probably don't want one of these anyway) or maybe just turn the preamp gain down, and if you really want a lot of sub100hz in your tone you'd be better off elsewhere. If however you can live with the 100hz hpf (and I know some of us are a little HPF obsessive these days!) this might be worth a look. Bombproof and easy to find used too. So far I'm loving it! Doug

yeah - what I was trying to say is that the Paradriver v2 filters out low-end in 2 ways. One is the switchable HPF (which is too high to do what the thumpinator does) and the other is the general Sansamp sub-sonic filter which is not switchable but is *roughly* in the right range for thumpinator duties. The idea with Sansamp, and this goes for all sansamp products from Tech21, is that they mimic what a mic on a cab would do, plus whatever preamp stuff is going on. As a result, not much energy at subsonic freqencies makes it through the pedal as a cab would fail to reproduce it and a mic would fail to pick it up. I don't know exactly what it does to be honest, but this is the idea, and it is why you *probably* don't need a thumpinator and a sansamp on at the same time. Hope that's of some help!

No worries . I asked this question of Tech21 via email and that's what they told me a while back.

Although the PD v2 rumble filter is not designed as a HPF for bass guitars, the unit does have the subsonic filter that all Sansamp products have, so it should not need a thumpinator or something like it to filter out very low (subsonic) frequencies.

Not wanting to offend the OP at all but I'd suggest deeply examining why you want this. There are many very good and very diverse products on the market. If you've got too much money and want a fun way to blow some of it, then this is a great idea. However, if you've convinced yourself you need a small batch, handmade boutique product for any functional reason honestly, and I say this from a place of BC comradeship, think again. Sounds a bit preachy but GAS is an addiction and what you're describing, and indeed the Noble, are expensive hits. I'll shut up now! Good luck with whatever you decide

I've got two of them now! They're very good in my opinion (and look great too!). There's a thread on here where I explain a simple modification I've made to mine that I reckon opened up the bottom end quite a bit. Just search for my content in amps n cabs forum and you'll see it, it's a doddle to do and costs 34p. Reasons I like them other than the tweed: Small and easy to carry (although not lightweight). The size makes it easy to get it in the car, through doors, up stairs etc. Comp, drive and EQ are very good. Old school power section beats like for like paperweight amps (IMHO ) and makes them repairable rather than disposable. Front facing controls make it stackable Exposed speaker lead and fx send and return make it very flexible indeed. I can run my two as a head with 2 x 12s at 4ohms, thus always having a spare head or could run them with bigger cabs, or as a stereo rig. The internal driver is really good, as I discovered on my other thread. For something so special they're remarkably cheap! Downsides: the cab is so small it's never going to sound enormous (despite the driver being good). But that's inevitable and if you want to get a massive sound use an extension cab (remember the speaker lead is exposed, so you can unplug the internal speaker and use 2 extensions if u really want to!). Its heavier than it looks. 23kg I think, but that used to be thought of as light!! There is some uncertainty about the rated power. Its called a MAG250, the back of the amp says 300w RMS but ashdown advised me on email it's 250. I don't truly know what the RMS rating is, but it's not a big deal at all. Hope this helps... as you can probably tell I'm happy to talk about these beauties! Doug.

The second port arrived and fit the hole effortlessly. I plugged in with both port tubes in place and it sounds great, certainly seems a lot less constrained in the bass range and not at all boomy, just a better, bigger sound. In looks tidy and as the baffle is made of thick MDF and is pretty small (as the cab itself is so small) I'm hoping it won't suffer in terms of stiffness / strength. It certainly seems solid. Very happy with it and as a result really don't feel the need to upgrade the speaker. Could be all in my head of course, but a placebo effect is still an effect! Pics for anyone interested :

Hi Stevie, patience was in short supply this morning To be honest, I enjoyed it and was thankful that the results were pretty positive, fortunately! I will A/B compare the ports for sure. There's no room for a 100mm port, I considered that. I don't think I'll be doing amymore sawing, so it'll either have one 75mm port, or I'll keep them both. How do you model a cab with 2 ports of different sizes? I've got WINISD but cant seem to do that. Finally, the 37 litres turned out to be an overestimation. More accurately measured it is 34.1 litres. Thanks again guys, and don't worry, if I end up making a huge mess out of it I will only thank you for your input and inspiration Anything that goes wrong is entirely down to my trigger happy approach!

Just sold Brian a pedal. Smooth transaction and friendly comms. Cheers