Al Krow

Hah! So I've actually had a filter on my board that you've not tried yet, well that's a first! FWIW - I think you will prefer your BEF to the Aguilar, the BEF is less polite and more funky, despite being band-pass rather than the low pass generally favoured by us bassists. What the Aggie unusually offers i.e. its USP is being able to blend two filters with separate up and down sweeps. Which did seem quirky, but with several more filters under my belt I've come to realise that I'm only ever going to want to engage either up or down sweep at any given time. Defo a cool video, but I suspect he could make just about any filter pedal sound great!

Mistresses are an expensive hobby at the best of time. Particularly precarious during lockdown. Just sayin'.

That's a great result when that happens! Enjoy it, and don't move it on it this time. I've managed to hold on to mine, and glad I did so, despite generous (and nearly tempting!) offers to take it off my hands! 😉😁

Do you have a particular budget in mind and are there any particular "must have" effects / other add ons you're looking for from your multifx?

No mention of the audio interface on the B3N or on their latest iteration: the more compact and really good value B14. Must admit that was a point that had escaped me in terms of older B3 --> current B3N / B14, probably 'cos like a number of BC'ers, I've got a Focusrite Scarlett for interface duties. I'm not particularly sure why Zoom did this, other than maybe to create a niche for this very neat "mini Zoom B3N" (strictly its a mini G3N) which is their current multifx audio interface: https://zoom-na.com/products/production-recording/audio-interfaces/gce-3-guitar-lab-circuit-emulator Cheapest I've seen this on the net is £75 at Andertons. One of the advantages of the Focusrite kit, depending on the model you choose, over e.g. a Zoom or Helix is having separate inputs rather than needing to route everything through your multifx so that you can clean blend some / all of drums, vocals, instrument and bass in real time together and put down a couple of tracks at a time, although I suspect for a lot of recordings that won't be an issue in that you'll lay down the drums and then layer each of the other instruments and vocals separately. The other issue with Zoom kit is that there is an element of underlying small but noticeable "digital artefact" noise on the B3N and B14, which is more present with some of the fx patches than others. This is fine for live use, but you wouldn't want it on a recording. I wonder if they have managed to eliminate this with the GCE3?

Good stuff. I'm sure it can be easily refined / improved on with different choices of Fuzz and changes to the Auto Filter settings, particularly if playing through a rig - I knocked it up in 30 mins flat via headphones last night, just to get the ball rolling.

It's a really interesting question. Calling @Bill Fitzmaurice or any of our other cab experts on what difference to the sound front or rear porting makes?

Hah - been asked that a couple of times already! Here you go... Synth Patch.pdf

Excellent - I suspect it will do as good a job and definitely be less glitchy than the Boss SYB-5 on that you YT clip you found. Although tbf, that was a nice little vid of various songs where a synth pedal could work well.

Synth Patch (do try this at home!) A couple of you have mentioned you're on the look out for a synth pedal for use on a couple of tracks. I've pulled this together on HFX - IMO it's usable (without being amazing). Based on classic: octave -> fuzz -> filter approach: Rochester Comp --> Simple Pitch [1] --> Valve Driver --> Autofilter [2] --> Low cut at 30Hz [1] pitch shift set at -12 i.e. octave down. Mix only at 40% to give a touch of octave to fatten without giving rise to mush. [2] low pass, up-sweep, short attack but long (1.0s) decay. If you try it out, let me know what you think.

for sure. Can you recall what it was about the BDDI that didn't cut the mustard (or chilli powder) in your case?

Yeah thinking about it, that's a pretty standard approach, right? Although according to Mr Bass5 the blend knob is the key. Was far too polite for my liking, a bit like having a curry with no chilli. Its sibling, the VTDI, has far more bite. But I can tell from my general direction of travel over the past half decade, definitely going from civilised to increasingly heathen!

Me too - maybe it's a just a MB, DG M900, BF cab user thing? 😁 But apparently if you dial it in using a very specific approach it can work really well. @Lozz196 shared the magic formula on another thread, but I can't for the life of me find it now!

Always a "wallet risk" to have space for one more pedal on your board! Proton arrived yesterday to take the remaining slot on my mini board. First impressions: very positive - it’s really easy to dial in a tasty filter sweep. Signal chain is Smoothhound wireless-->Boss LS -->Zoom B1X-4-->3Leaf Proton--> Digitech Mosaic. As mentioned previously, the Zoom is in the LS2's loop to allow me to blend in as much clean to combine with the Zoom's effects. That's a must for a lot of the Zoom drive patches, particularly my fav Rat Tail, but it's a "nice to have" to keep some authentic low end with other fx.

Bought a pedal from Maciej. As mentioned in all the posts above - the item was very well packed, good communication and he is a pleasure to deal with.

Haha you're right, except the link above was shared by the guy himself who wrote the relevant post and takes you straight to his post. No need, for the busy bass player (ok that's none of us currently) to read through a whole 'nother thread to find it. You're welcome 😉

Following on from the recommendation of the Auto Filter sim, found a nice little post on getting to grips with it: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/line-6-hx-effects.1324948/page-108#post-21880052

Interesting that the SY-1000 incorporates an actual synth. Sadly it costs an absolute fortune. The Mooer GE 300 is the only multifx with a genuine synth engine, although there are a couple of effects sims on the Helix that pupport to churn out sine, saw and square waves, which would be worth looking into further. @Woodinblack @GisserD, you both have Helix: are the Helix digital sims actual digital synth (like the FI and C4) or merely synth emulations like the older EHX "synth 9" style pedals? Anyone know what the EHX Bass Microsynth was doing in terms of its (tbf pretty average) synth sounds?

I'm out. Pedal arrived safely from Poland this morning, so I couldn't even rely on the fall back of it getting lost in the post...£5 fine in the kitty. Well I managed to last a whole month. On the plus side I've managed to avoid buying any one of three excellent basses despite @bassfan's best efforts at thrusting Status and Sadowsky's under my nose, so I guess I should at least be thankful for that. Finn Dave is still in this and seems to be going strong!

I appreciate we've gone all techy over the past couple of pages, but I've certainly enjoyed the in depth discussion and now have a better understanding of the guts of this pedal vs some of the others out there. Besides, there's only so many times during the course of a 400 post thread that you can say "this is a great pedal with amazing tracking!" 😁

Mate, either all of it or none. 😁

The white non-x version is not too shabby either, just sayin' 😁

Cheers @GisserD - that's very clear and helpful!

I'm assuming what the FI is doing is pretty much the same as the Source Audio C4? But is there a difference between waveforms generated by DSP code and VCOs in generating the basic currency of synths i.e. sine, triangle, saw or square wave if the output were to be measured. Are the voltage controlled filters and amplifiers also DSP code and not analogue circuitry in the FI and C4? I guess where I am going with this is wondering whether even the best bass synth pedals are in fact a type of software "synth emulator" rather than actual synth pedals, and does it make any real difference to the sounds they produce as compared to a "real" i.e. analogue circuitry generated synth?