Al Krow

There's a current TB thread on Tech 21 pedals and a comment from one of the posters re. Tech 21 confirmation. But if you also found differently, I should reduce that percentage figure 😂

From the comments I've read, 99% of folk found the exact same thing with the Tech 21 dUg Pinnick, which I believe Tech 21 themselves may have acknowledged. I guess that's one of the benefits of having the AO on the AO900 - you have some impressively flexible gain stage options on that amp!

Sid - a couple of posts from me on here a while back, which look at the amp and AO drive in a bit of detail: The clean tone on the amp is great, and it now has a 6 band EQ rather than 4 band with variable mids; and I know you were hugely impressed with the clean tone and EQ from your own review of the Mk1 in your amp shoot out a few years back. When I'm playing live I tend it to use it mostly clean, and maybe add a bit of grit from the drive for harmonic richness, rather than using it full on drive mode.

Gotcha - that's definitely a crap experience to have had! Was it just an unfortunate one-off or did it require a full repair / replacement - hopefully under warranty? FWIW - I find that the Tech 21 VT Bass DI, which is more featured than the VT Bass you've tried, really hits the spot in terms of that 'blanket lifting' effect, even with gear I really wouldn't expect it to "improve". Primarily I think due to the 'bite' switch which I leave permanently on, and which provides a ‘presence’ boost by boosting the upper mids and treble so that the tone becomes more pronounced and present especially in a mix. It also has a subsonic HPF filter to tighten up the sound. It's also got a very decent 3 band EQ & character / drive dials for tone shaping from clean to full on dirt. Put that all together and it's very possibly exactly the antidote needed for a dark sounding bass? Out of interest why are short scales darker than 34" scales?

Won't your Helix Stomp give you pretty much all the tone shaping options you need? What do you feel it's lacking?

I've not managed to find anything on YT for the Pigtronix Octava on bass...guess I'll get my own chance to give it a spin when it lands next week! But I think the combination of LS2 + Octava may be the ticket.

Came across your post on another thread and found myself intrigued. I'm guessing you didn't take it any further with this pedal? It's obviously an octave up rather than down and unlike, the digital Digitech Mosaic or Ricochet which does an excellent polyphonic clean octave up as mentioned above, this is an analogue frequency doubler with diode clipping fuzz and with lpf to roll off any grating toppy-treble. It seems to be very much aimed at guitarists but I reckon it might be interesting on bass, although I've not found anyone who's reviewed it on bass yet. Apparently it's crap at handling minor chords but deals with major chords well! From the YT clips I've seen, the blend seems to either swamp the dry signal or have no wet signal at all. But paired with an LS2 this thing might just be freakin' brilliant! Love the compact form factor and the fact it's got an excellent built in fuzz. New prices can be a little bit punchy on this, which definitely puts me off makes trying one out on spec but I think I may have managed to snag one used on Reverb...

+1 for the Digitech kit. I've got the simpler Mosaic and it does an excellent job at just octave up. I recorded some clips a while back, using the Mosaic and managed to persuade at least a few BC'ers that it was a genuine 8 string! The Ricochet adds a ton more features, though, for not much extra cost.

Yeh something like that (with an octave up) would be pretty neat! Kinda reminds me of some of the pedals that Tom at COG was doing half a decade ago...

Not really harsh - his "big" thing was going to be the octave up, wasn't it? In the end, not too much has changed on Mk3 and it's left a lot of his fan base a little disappointed. Don't always have to be a mega corp to deliver good value, although I agree it can help. The most faithful OC-2 clone IMO is the Valeton OC-10 which is even better value - not sure we would regard them as a mega corp either? Besides mega corps have a LOT more mouths to feed, property rental costs etc. etc. I think the OC-5 is going to put a lot of pressure on boutique OC2 clones who's key selling point for charging £££'s was you get an OC-2 but better.

So £300+ for a 3Leaf Octabvre Mk3 - key selling point that it does the OC2 thing very well and with better tracking, but singularly failed to include an octave up, despite promises that it would or £119 for an OC-5 which does the OC2 thing very well and with better tracking and with octave up. Hmmm...I wonder which one is going to outsell? 😁

Going the other way: there's a rumour on the TB OC-5 thread that Boss have put the SY-1's tracking into the OC-5. If that's the case, it's a bit of a game changer! Clearly the feedback to Boss on just how fantastic the SY-1 is at tracking has not been lost on them! Obviously the SY-1 is a fair bit more expensive and can do a whole bunch of other cool stuff besides octave down (and up), and it also has a parallel loop facility and can be used with an expression pedal which the OC-5 doesn't. fauxtoe said: ↑ fauxtoe said: ↑

Good point - that now makes complete sense (even if its the wrong way around for us bass players)! This pedal does have a switch to go from guitar <--> bass mode (similar to the SY-1) so it's clearly been aimed at both markets as you say. Wouldn't it have been bloomin' marvellous if by dint of switching from guitar <--> bass mode the 'polarity' on the range sweep was also reversed so that bass players could select how low the octave down went? That way they would be keeping both bass players and guitarists happy - it would certainly have tipped me over the edge into getting one! Boss if you're reading this thread...

Haha - I was simply trying to give you an example that might work for you when you are playing 4 strings. 5 string players have more flexibility of using or not using an octave pedal at all, as I think we have just demonstrated. Hence my earlier comment of having much less use of octave pedals these days! And don't get me wrong having the low B string is great! Which is why I play 5ers. But it will be a somewhat different flavour to playing the notes an octave up with an octaver-down pedal added and two notes simultaneously ringing out, as you already know. IME octave-up pedals don't quite cut it in the same way: I find they sound much tinnier than the equivalent pitched note played normally, and often come with greater latency issues than octave down pedals.

You and me both - just had one gig a couple of weeks back and no rehearsals in the past six months! Agreed - it won't be for every track for sure. And tbf I have much less use for octave down now I'm playing 5ers exclusively. But I guess an obvious example would be something like Bruno Mars - Runaway Baby to kick in the octave down part way through the main bass riff which I mainly play an octave above low E. Will save me physically playing the main riff an octave down starting on the 5th note of the low B string to provide contrast. Yup, that would be an awesome combination - the Proton MkIV (I've got on my board) and Octabvre MkIII have both come out this year. And a combo that would also leave your bank balance a tad lighter too 😁

It will track lower and tighter without glitching than anything else out there. I also really appreciate not having to modify my playing style or needing to select a particular pup to "keep the pedal happy", which is the case with a lot of octavers. Which is bliss in terms of one less thing to have to think about in a band mix. It has a very clean octave down tone though - which is fine for fattening up your dry core bass sound. If you want something more coloured then you'll need to add a dirt / gated fuzz / bit crusher pedal of choice. I'm finding it pretty hard to justify getting a separate octave down pedal, right now, 'cos I know they simply won't match the SY-1 on tracking. It's also obviously a bonus having one pedal that does both octave and synth duties in terms of cost and PB space saving.

Here's a clip of the B1-4 Tape Echo and drum machine in use combined with the Red Ripper Fuzz and Proton Filter played on my Yammy BB1025 to get a not too shabby synth sound effect: RipProtoTape 1 - BB1025.wav

Cheers for sharing the review Lee. My key takeaways were: (15.00) Good classic OC2 sound! And without the volume loss that OC2 suffers from on solo -1 Oct? (17.37) Not bad digital octave up - more rounded and less 'tinny' than EHX / Pog pedals, but still prefer my Digitech Mosaic for oct up - which I think would do a better job than what I'm hearing at (26.50) (22.27) Seems to be implying that it has analogue oct down in vintage mode (OC2) but digital oct down in poly mode (OC3) Poly mode seems to be straight from OC3 - which never particularly impressed me. And they still have threshold the wrong way around - why would you want to only have Oct down on the low notes and not the high notes? The other way around I totally get! But it seems to have improved / less glitchy tracking as compared to its predecessors. I still don't think it matches the Boss SY-1 for tracking (tbf there is nothing out there which does!) which is currently my goto Synth and Oct pedal. Am I tempted to get one? Possibly - but really only because it gets so close to classic OC2 without volume loss. The rest I'd happily give a miss.

Some pics + sound clip, would be great!

Go for it! What's the worst that could happen (particularly if you manage to bag a used one)?

A few pointers from me: In terms of size the B1-4 is actually half way between the M6-60B and B3. Looking at the dimensions online just now, its almost exactly half the footprint of the B3. As you said, the B1-4 does have the latest chip set and its defo a feature rich piece of kit. I've had the MS-60B, B3N, B1-4X and have settled on the B1-4 and am very happy with it. Personally, I found the interface on the MS-60B the least user friendly but with the advent of Tonelib editing software, it's much easier to create and edit patches, so that should be less of an issue. The B3 and MS-60B have some legacy patches that are very cool e.g. a couple of the synth effects which are not (yet) available on the B1-4 and B3N; although tbf there's quite a bit of new stuff on the B1-4 that's not on the older models. The B3 has a DI out which the rest don't and I believe a better interface for recording, and still has a LOT of fans!

Referring to you @Happy Jack's recommendation on this FS post for anyone in a 3 piece band! ...and apologies for the shameless plug!

@Old rocker and @PaulThePlug - gents congrats on the new purchase. The B1-4 is the best value pedal on the market bar none!! Worth the price as an easy to use LED lit tuner, and headphone amp with aux in. Then there's a really useful drum machine for home practice and it's already easily paid for itself before you've used ANY of its effects - lol! There are a few patch settings on this thread you could try out and a fair few experienced hands e.g. @stewblack and @JohnDaBass whose brains you can pick. My advice for starting out would be: (i) work through each of the pre-loaded patches and delete all the ones you're never likely to use (about 80% in my case!); (ii) download the free editing software from Tonelib and start creating your own patches. The software makes it both easy and fun: https://tonelib.net/ (iii) get yourself a decent quality USB cable to connect up your B1-4 to your PC; (iv) be aware that this £60 box of tricks won't do everything amazingly well - it would be unreasonable to think that it could and why I've still got a bunch of dedicated pedals to use alongside it; (v) for the patches you're keeping / creating - adjust the effects output so that you get a similar volume on each patch as you do on clean by-pass (vi) I've recently discovered the Tape Echo on the B1-4 and OMG it's just so delicious!! Example attached of what Tape Echo sounds like with the fuzz and filter on my board and the B1-4 also providing the beat. And finally... (vii) don't be too surprised if you find yourself having a lot fun using this hugely clever budget bag of tricks

Interesting - the spec on Spector's website says its a reverse PJ for the Euro Classic 5...you'd hope Spector would manage to get it correct! But if not, they've saved my bank balance - so I guess I should be grateful!

@dave74200 - you should clearly have posted on this forum for a more sympathetic response! Have a good weekend mate.