Al Krow

Woody - that's literally a sick joke! Next thing we'll be hearing - this has been taken up by Fox News! 😁

I've ordered several times from them and with one exception the service has been fine i.e. they have delivered on time and / or provided a refund where items have been returned. My most recent purchase / return (just a pedal) was, however, seriously painful, but fortunately I had bought through PayPal and eventually got a refund by escalating matters with them, but there was a fair bit of angst along the way. They did apologise for this latest purchase, which was as much the courier / their warehousing issue as anything, and mentioned being short staffed. But I'm more than a little reluctant to head back in their direction. I'm assuming you've tried their telephone helpline? You're sometimes on a fairly lengthy wait, but I usually got through in the end and kept a note of the conversation which I emailed to them. So certainly not previously a scam, but they did seem to be sinking under the volume of returns they were processing, which must have been killing their margins. I do hope you get your bass sorted.

Looks like a variation of the Lehle Sonic Spark you previously had? Interestingly Lehle have discontinued that particular pedal.

I think it's being a little bit "generous" on Zoom's part to be asserting that. The B3N / B1-4 do not, themselves, have IR capability. Zoom have used IR from amps and cabs to provide them with the basis in designing their cab sims. In other words they are saying they think they're pretty close to the real thing.

Wow - we have "Road" and "Street" for the same street names right next to each and used to get that all the time given identical postcodes. I've had to resort to putting "NOT Road" on all our Amazon etc addresses. But 8 miles apart!! Postman must have been asleep... Nice ending to the story though!

Very much where I'm landing with pedals in discussions with some fellow BC'ers - a zillion different options per pedal are not needed on the typical covers gigs. Need to find the settings that work and "set and forget". Where I can see a lot of optionality being useful would be for: i) home / studio creative use; ii) original band work, but I'm speaking here from a completely theoretical stand point, not really having been in an originals band since my youth (and once briefly since then but a long while back) when I pretended to be the guitarist! With EQ settings, however, in a typical covers set you're typically going to want a different EQ set up for each of motown, rock and slap and the key is to be able to make quick, easy and accurate transition for each. Two of the three are pretty easy to do on a typical Yammy BB just by rolling the tone off and / or adjusting the P / J balance. For more than two - having a scroll-able EQ pedal seems to be a good solution.

In theory the B3N should edge it on sound quality as it has the newer Zoom chip set and it does have greater processing power which allows additional effects in a patch as compared to the MS-60B. If you want the best of both worlds including: the much easier programming interface and patch scrolling, together with headphone amp capability and latest chip set of the B3N; plus easy to access drum machine and looper and global volume and EQ controls for a price that's comparable or less than the MS-60B, I'd recommend considering getting the B1-4 instead. I've got the sibling B1X-4 - it's a bit larger than the B1-4 due to the wah pedal and a little more expensive (but not by much). I've previously had both the MS-60B and B3N but have happily settled on the B1X-4 as my budget multifx. Hope that helps.

As you were panic over, my bad. Not sure what I was thinking but a headphone amp with no bells and whistles (e.g. like a multifx attached such as my Zoom B1X-4 has!) is totally "allowed" gear - no impact on your signal chain whatsoever (other than what you would expect from a headphone amp!). So you're still in the game and pretty much now a whole month in! (And no £5er contribution to the kitty just yet!) Isn't it 'bout time you bought a fancy six string? I'm sure I saw you (quite rightly!) drooling over a KS a while back 😁

Hey - sounds like you've been through the wars! But hopefully you're on the road to being fully mended.

Just need the small item of a Mac and you're good to go! 😉

Sounds to me like you're sorted then! I'm not convinced you'll find a BB NE2 very different to your Spector, what with the contoured body shape, neck through design, big low end etc. In fact, I did briefly think about moving my NE2 on after I got my Euro LX5, for the above reasons, and your Spector will be even closer to an NE2 with its semi para 3 band EQ than mine is.

Tyler - yeah my default setting is also to have the NE EQ engaged as you say, whether fully dialled or partially scooped. I've not given it quite such a careful analysis as to what it's like without as per your post, but I guess I won't be disagreeing given it's the same bass! Be good to get @pete.young's views on the NE2 too, as he's had his a lot longer than I've had your former bass.

Picking up on one comment from your earlier post (albeit just the good bits!) - I think you've summed up in a sentence the key benefit for that NE pre-amp on the BB NE2. Just need to work out a way of putting that versatility to controlled use rather than it being an annoying negative. But I think, between us, we've identified a very cheap and professional looking solution! @TRBboy - this is what I've managed to come up with from a web search this morning. Not fluorescent, but should otherwise do the job!

Yeah - I totally get that. But methinks it can be done pretty subtly and professional in appearance with some adhesive micro dots. That could actually be very useful for both a couple of my basses and several pedals! Now why didn't I think of that before? - clearly you've inspired me to get my thinking cap on with this discussion! Time to go hunting on the net - if any of you get there before me / are using already, please do share!

Oh and if you think the NE2 EQ gives you too much choice, then definitely steer clear of Status S3 parametrix! 😁

I think that's very fair and a great way of deciding whether the BB NE2 is going to be worth spending some serious coin on or not. The issue of remembering what the sweet spot settings on analogue pedals (without presets available on digital pedals) is an age old one and plenty of folk deal with this by putting some markers on their pedals. If you thought the NE1 was tricksy, I would wager the VT Bass DI is even more so - really liked what ead has done with some simple markers on his:

I haven't, but this chap is selling one (and for a fair bit less than the one eBay, albeit it's a 4 strings) - and he, or the chap he brought it from 10 years back, would be able to speak from experience about the bass. The electronics aren't quite the same though: it looks like it doesn't have the NE sweepable mids i.e. it has the same EQ config as that on current BB734/5A.

Nice little review by this zany crew. The iconic Rick clank is very clear at 0.25 into the clip. Just wondering whether I can avoid dropping £2k on one of these (the prices do seem to have come down a bit and are retailing closer to the £2.2k mark these days) and get that clank via a Tech 21 pedal or something similar? If any of you feel you've got that Rick sound bottled in a pedal, please do share your ingredients!

Hey HJ - methinks we need to coax you for that review! (Unless it's been done and I somehow missed it along the way!)

Agreed I would generally mid boost rather than cut when gigging. The point about the NE EQ is that it overlays a trad 3 band EQ. So you can mid boost the mids using the 3 band EQ, but then layer a boost / cut to different mid frequencies to get your "sound". That's the NE2 USP in a nutshell. We've just been discussing the lack of EQ centre freq info (on the Sire P7 thread) and this is certainly true for the NE2, but I've been advised that we can use a DAW to glean this info. But it seems to me that before diving in to get an NE2, you could very usefully get a Nathan East pedal (they have come up in the FS from time to time) and see if it gives you anything extra on the sound. If it does then you'll know much more what you're getting with the bass itself.

It's very good as a solo P and, yes, provides a solid P bass sound. I'm a huge fan of Yammy PJs, but I actually prefer the Sire solo P to the Yammy solo P; it gets closer to iconic Fender P to my ears. And the Sire has the benefit of an active circuit for additional punch whereas a lot the Yammy BBs are purely passive. ... But for completeness / balance: I prefer the Yammy PJ blend over the Sire PJ blend. The solo bridge Js are both very usable on both the Sire and the Yammy. And it's certainly good to have a passive Yammy BB bass in the arsenal.

Yeah totally agree, was thinking earlier it would be super useful if more bass makers disclosed this stuff in the same way that most amps seem to do these days, and the way Sire have done. But thanks for the tip-off from you and Dave about using a DAW to uncover this info.

Thanks John - that's very helpful. Also explains why the low end boost needs to be used so sparingly if the bass EQ has been centred at 20Hz! On the other hand, I suspect it's going to be quite an effective HPF / "low end crud" eliminator when cut.

Dunno if any my fellow Sire P7 owners have worked out what mid freq setting is when the para mid dial is in it's mid 'notch' position? The para mid frequency is stated as going from 80Hz to 2kHz, so it's clearly between these two. Helpfully for me the mid 'notch' position seems to be a really good default in terms of both sweetening the tone when cut and providing additional mid punch when boosted.