Al Krow

I really shouldn't be quite so chuffed with a £10 9V PSU. But this one has decent 2A capacity and, if you're ever gigging with single multi-fx pedal, this has a 2m cable! Bloody marvellous!

And vice versa, haha! Have the prices come down a bit recently, I thought they were closer to £340 inc P&P?

Great review, thanks Luke!

Nailed it!

Great job on all fronts! Catchy 80's vibe and quality production by Haunting the Atom. Nice one!

Good price. Not going to deny also being a Zoom fanboi! Remind us, Dave, what made you move it on last time and what's tempting you to get it back (other than the price)? I'm in the market for a standalone multifx to gig with for some gigs that would be a lot easier for me to get to by public transport gigs (now the Elizabeth Line is connecting places like Reading to London!). But for another £110 Thomann are selling a B-stock Boss GX-10 with parallel processing, much larger touch screen and IMO significantly better PSU.

Oh I hope you manage to find the cause of the issue pdq and it's not down to the pedal but something less expensive like a faulty cable or PSU! Couple of further Qs if I may: what casing are you transporting your GX-10 in for protection & what's it like as a headphone amp? (My cheap-as chips Zoom B1-4 has a pretty doesn't one!)

Hey @SumOne and @deerhunter113 did you hold onto your GX-10 and, if so, how are you finding it after a living with it for several months? Was looking at the specs of portable multi-fx to save me removing/reinserting my GT1000 Core each time I want something smaller for use on public transport and this seems to be a much more capable piece of kit than many in a similar £300 price bracket e.g. Helix Pod Go with its ancient chip set! Quite enjoyed this chap's review:

100% ^^ Fortunately for detuning we only ever need 2 or 3 semis for our alto singer. If we have a male vox it may sometimes be 5 semis, but that's usually handled easily enough by playing on a different string. You keeping yours?

@BigRedX Paddy didn't seem to have too much trouble nailing a great synth sound! Ok he's a fab bass player, but it's still clearly possible with this pedal!

I personally don't de-tune strings mid set - too much "dead air time", so it's been a case of learning songs in a different key or using a pitch shift pedal, which I've generally tried to avoid until now as I've found they had too much warble/latency and the XS-1 certainly does a better job than my multi-fx. Hopefully opens up more of our set for our alto lead vox to have a crack at (the other two who front the band are mezzo sops).

Enjoy! I'm already liking mine a lot! Have got it connected up to an expression pedal for a bit of whammy fun which doubles up as a more accessible on/off on my board. I bought it primarily for detuning duties but, as others have said, it's very probably the best octave up pedal currently around (certainly for the price) and is opening up 8 string opportunities with my crew ("yeah you can stop doubling up the bass line now!") which should allow us to fill out the sound further.

Congrats on the new XS-1! When did that make its first appearance?

Another +1 for the Bugera Veyron and agree with all Dan's comments above. Dare I say it's: light, capable and cheap/great value (probably 'cos they are built efficiently in China, where they also make our beloved iPhones?).

He is at least using his signature Markbass kit which often also has blanket connotations, as well as the older Zoom pedals. Maybe he just likes blankets?

@jacq - thanks for sharing that clip with Marcus's PB on it! Here's a screenshot from the YT clip: That's an old Zoom B3n which is the same generation chip and software as the Zoom B1-4 - so it seems it's good enough for Marcus! The newer Zoom chipset is in the B6, B2-4 and MS-60B+. I did prefer the MS-60B+ tonally a little over the Zoom B1-4, but its inability to display the name of the patch you are on (other than very temporarily) and lack of PC editing make it much less usable both for patch creation and live use. No such limitations on the older MS-60B and Zoom B1-4. But no question for me that mid-range multifx such as the GT1000Core are a step up in processing power and the tone they can deliver, but are several times the price of the budget range multis such as the GP-5 and Zoom pedals.

Seems to be the key point here, thanks. Please remind us why that is Bill - sound reinforcement from the walls? I suspect 8/10 pub / bar bands in the UK put their tops on poles above their subs due to space limitation issues. But if the only downside is directionally locatable frequencies and bands aren't fussed about the losing the ability to put subs anywhere, then no particular problems crossing over at a higher frequency than the usual 100Hz when using a bass combo as a sub?

Completely concur with @Baloney Balderdash on how good this thing is for octave up and down! It wasn't my original use case (detuning) but this will open up a lot of 8 string bass possibilities for filling out the sound, which is ideal for a 4 piece outfit like ours with just one guitar and no keys. An unexpected bonus and, dare I say, worth the price of the pedal by itself?

It's an interesting one, 'cos there's an argument that tops are completely fine with going down to 60Hz? So why cross at 100Hz? I'm definitely no expert here, but if a key purpose is to relieve the tops of their low end lows to focus on non-bass frequencies, then crossing over at 150Hz (because the bass combo can easily handle up to this) would be more beneficial than 100Hz. But, as I say, I'm no expert!

Totally agree with a standard sub, which often don't go much higher anyway. But was wondering whether it might make sense to flex this to make more use of the bass combo's ability to handle higher frequencies?

Agreed! Clean does look really great and very satisfying too! But having engaged the wrong effect at the wrong time mid song and getting justifiably disapproving looks from bandmates, I've come to appreciate the need for adequate spacing for my large feet with gigging boards!

Speaking of compact gigging pedal boards, I've been really enjoying this set up for the past 5 months: However Boss went and released their XS-1 pitchshift pedal, which looked really neat and has been getting excellent reviews for its tone and tracking and meant we could potentially extend our set to the lower vocal range of our alto singer without me needing to re-learn songs in different keys and new muscle memory. However no space on my mini board, and my next size up was a Rockboard, but gave the opportunity to add an expression pedal which puts the XS-1 into full whammy mode. Space left over to re-load a few other pedals that had been sitting on my pedal shelf itching to be used and my trusty Zoom B1-4 as a back up multi, which also provides a beats unit - would have come in very handy at a recent gig when the drummer had a puncture and couldn't make the gig, so we ended up doing the gig as a drum-less 3 piece, which was character building!

Spent a few hours setting up a larger pedal board to accommodate the XS-1 and Boss EV-30 dual output expression pedal, in addition to the three pedals I previously had on my compact gigging board (and then, of course, filled up the rest of the board with a few other pedals that had been patiently sitting on my pedal-shelf itching to be used!) The expression pedal puts it into full whammy mode and seems to work by over-riding the on-off when the XS-1 is "on" (obvs has no impact when the pedal is in by-pass). It applies a range of mix & detune from 0 (fully dry / no detune) to 100 with the destination mix and interval being whatever is set on the XS-1. Effectively allows both momentary to be engaged, plus also incremental tones to be set and held. It is pretty cool/fun, particularly when combined with the SY-200!

@paulmcnamara cheers for bringing this to the attention of the BC community (and maybe less for hitting my wallet, haha!). Would you be up for amending the title to "XS-1 and XS-100" for us, so the thread captures both pedals that are being discussed on here? If so, if you or one of the mods ( @Woodinblack?) could put that through, that would be fab.

Had a chance to try mine out properly this evening. Really nice octave up and down, the momentary is neat! Like the fact that it has a chorus thrown in. The de-tuning both up and down is decent and tracking good. Moment of minor panic when I thought I wasn't able to get a 100% wet signal, however another bassist suggested I might just be hearing the acoustic sound from my bass in addition to the output via my home monitors, as I was playing at pretty low late-night home volumes. When I double checked by recording the output, turns out he was right! And obviously the clean acoustic sound is going to have more of an impact on a pitch shift than with pretty much all other fx - so certainly a point for me to be aware of going forward!