Al Krow

Delighted to have the privilege of starting a feedback thread for Keith (aka @BlueMoon). Really straightforward transaction and actually one of the smoothest I've done because, despite being in Belgium, Keith organised a courier collection for the HX Stomp he bought from me, in the shape of his son who is based in London (and has just started learning bass, himself). Great comms, speedy transaction and payment - thank you! Enjoy the pedal. Bas

Yeah, but instead of getting distortion, phaser, compressor, delay and looper you just bought one pedal to rule them all.

That's one awesome rig to go with a very tasty bass! Welcome aboard the Yammy club! Did you buy new or manage to pick one up used? But with reactions like yours to the BB range, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised that we've just snuck passed 3,000 posts on this thread (and can't be more than 2,500 of those down to me and Andy T 😂). I think I'm correct in saying that's the first ever bass focussed thread to pass that particular milestone in BC's history. Here's a glass raised to Yammys

If you want a value for money synthy octave then check out the Valeton OC-10 (review posted in the reviews section), one of the best and certainly best value Boss OC2 clones on the market. Combine with dirt or fuzz to taste.

I'm pretty sure mine was the v2 of the T65 ie not requiring the Y cable for the loop.

Guess you've already seen this?

Getting back on topic...referring to the HG 310 and 312s: Hi - we will have these in stock in January. Kind regards Mark Stickley Bass Direct Ltd

I have a cunning plan 😎 Besides there might be a Stomp coming up FS in the near future if someone works out how to use their Helix FX as a headphone amp.

They've only really complained about the bass tone ever once and it was down to room acoustics rather than the bass as I was using a Yammy PJ, so not an aggressive Ibby or Spector. Sound check absent any audience in a large high ceiling function room and they felt the bass was sitting above the mix rather than below the mix and it was a volume issue. I don't think a couple of them have worked out what a difference bodies make! In terms of mids I'm kinda hearing from the great and the good on this forum that where the action is is at 250 Hz and a slight push there plus maybe a slight cut at 500 Hz to sweeten the pot is the way to go.

Just need to see if they have a Berg sim and I'll be good to go 😁

Don't disagree about balancing drums and bass. That's always gotta make sense. The moaners will be fine as long as the vocal monitor is blaring and they can hear themselves! 😎

I've had some sense knocked into me yesterday by a couple of mates on the forum with a very sensible suggestion (alternative 1). Alternative 1 - normal backline set up Guess I just need to get over my concern/prejudice that our 310A tops won't handle a bit of bass & kick drum plus full-on vocals & acoustic guitar/sax. My concern here has always been that as they are just 10" speakers and not particularly tuned to handling bass it's going to compromise the most important bit of the sound which IMO (and with due respect to everyone else on this forum) are the vocals. "put some bass through the PA: you don't need much, just a hint of it to get it out over their heads of the audience. The rig can supply the low end and the PA the definition. And then just turn down the volume from the cab so that the stage volume is not too loud." Bingo - great advice! Alternative 2 - keeping the cap at the front? Turns out that the DG AO 900 amp has a very versatile DI & headphone out set up. The headphone out and "post" DI out are both taken post comp, drive and EQ. The gain knob impacts both DI and headphone out, but then there is an additional independent vol control for the headphones and the master vol only impacts what is being sent to the cab, so in effect I have 3 independent volume controls to DI, headphones and cab. So should I want a personal IEM for bass monitoring, I could in theory just make use of the headphone out.

The one issue that @GisserD and I both encountered with a T65 pedal which I sold to him a couple of years back, was the fact you can't get a completely clean octave i.e. there's always a slight bleed from the dirty octave-up which can't be dialled down to nil; which maybe ties in with Lee's comment about the T16 being better at clean tones. Tom at COG confirmed this was not a fault in the unit but a "design feature" (or flaw depending on your perspective!) I posted a detailed write up of the issues somewhere(!) in the Octave multi-thread:

With regard to the Stomp vs HX FX, won't some of the amp and cab sims be really useful if you're trying to emulate Tech 21 kit e.g. that new SH1 pedal?

@Corto14 never had or played a 2000 myself. But I've heard folk say that they were the very finest of the BB passive range. You got your eye on that one then?

He's way cuter than me.

It's a very interesting point you make. The subject of 'tone woods' is obviously a divisive / controversial one with many (me included) being sceptical of the impact of importance of the wood choices in the mix other than to look / feel good as a playing instrument rather than impact per se on the sound. But the point you're articulating of woods + pups => key combination for delivering 'growl' has been more scientifically presented than anything I've recently come across on the topic, so very well done in arriving at your insight.

Yup this one:

The SC caps out at 4kHz. Which tends to limits top end 'zing' if you're looking to slap. As a bass cab it's a lovely piece of kit.

I'm going to turn the cab upside down. All fair points, matey. And IEMs are something defo worth discussing. We've kinda shot ourselves in the foot on this though as we upgraded our mixer only a few months back and the band (primarily the drummer - he and I are the ones who tend to deal with the PA and mixing issues) wanted to keep it analogue and simple and not go down the digital mixing route, so we ended up getting a big brother Allen & Heath mixing desk. We don't have a dedicated sound guy so it's a case of getting everything set up and doing a quick sound check before gigs and tweaking a touch as we go along - the beauty of an analogue mixer with just one monitor is that it is really easy to tweak. I think to get individual tailored IEM outputs we're going to need to get a capable digital mixer - or have I got that wrong?

Having said all that, this talk of IEMs has reminded me that there is an additional very neat feature on my DG AO M900 which wasn't present on my M900 v1 and which could get around the limitations of having just one A&H monitor output. I'll check that out later today to see if it provides an alternative temporary fix which I might be able to combine with an IEM for just me and report back.

Hah! I think fair to say the main beneficiary here is me as the bass player, being able to hear myself better and also my sound for the audience in that I'm not having to cut the volume so that it's not too loud on stage. A £1000+ cab is indeed a princely sum. But the fair comparison for me is something like getting a Fearless F112 which is £800+ combined with a RCF 310A as a dedicated bass monitor which costs around £300, plus upgrading our A&H Mixer, which I think only has one monitor output and certainly only one master monitor volume control. The approach I'm trying to adopt is a very incremental / non invasive one i.e. just replacing an existing bass cab with another one rather than proposing a wholesale change to the band's set up involving possibly a digital mixer and IEMs, which is a battle for another day.

Superb post @Kiwi - thank you.