Al Krow

Great post thanks @krispn! Picking up on some of your points: My pedal board is still 'bedroom warrior' stuff and will be for a while. Just the little Zoom B1X-4 taken on the road so far. And yup all the drives on that Zoom multi lose low-end, even with a boosted bass EQ patch added to the effect. As has been commented on by dB the DG pedals do also lose low end and that features on the VMT and B3K effects built into the DG M900. You can clean blend to compensate; but the ability of the relatively few pedals such as the Grizzly Bass to give you a driven low end without the need for clean blend is, for me, preferable, as the whole of your bass signal (including the low end) benefits from the dirt tone and I suspect is less likely to get lost in the mix than I find with the M900 / B1X-4 dirt, rather than be overpowering which was your concern. Am starting to make progress with the Stomp, though, and will maybe pull together a little mini board with that and a couple of other pedals, later in the year. I'll have to admit that the Stomp has recently demonstrated that it is in a league above the Zoom on a couple of patches (e.g. pitch shifting) and the HX Edit is making much lighter work of creating and editing patches than I had feared might be the case. Yup my points on the TH were picked up straight from the Andertons' sales page, so thanks for correcting! On tone shaping do you think the Aggie will bring something to the party that the Stomp won't? Or alternatively a Tech 21 Q\Strip (which I've recently acquired in a trade from Mr Bass5). In terms of the hint of tube growl on my BB1025 - it's not by any means a full-on tube growl which I hope was clear from my earlier post. The BB1025 P pup should be pretty similar to your BB 734A; it's not as 'flat' as the BB425 or I suspect a Fender P (@dannybuoy will be able to confirm as he has both) but has some complex harmonic overtones / richness, which I really like, even through a clean amp such as the DG M900. It's a similar harmonic richness to what I hear from my Mesa M6 with other basses and I put this down to the M6 preamp which features a 12Ax7 tube. I know you and I often use terms like 'punch', 'growl' and 'throaty' a little differently but I hope that clarifies what I was trying to get across.

Very nice! 3 commissioned basses in one year? Next time you tell me that you don't have funds to buy my BF SC: a) I'll know exactly why! b) you'll find me totally sympathetic to your missus, and c) I will thank you, as holding on to that 21 lb cab was a really good thing to do! My BF SC does not have any tolex issues... ... aaand we're seamlessly back on topic! 😂

Btw - have you posted a pic of your 'saucy blonde ACG' somewhere? Sounds fantastic. Speaking of trouble, tbf - I totally get why your missus would be kicking up a fuss if you have just started something with a saucy blonde 😂

It was indeed very funny. Is she still letting you get a Glock amp?! If not wait can I put a slightly wicked thought into your head? Wait until the Bergantino B|Amp hp (with the new 600W 8ohm power module) is out next year (just a rumour I'm starting, I know!**). I think it's gonna be awesome... ** although when I had a little bit of banter with Jim Bergantino over on TB, he didn't deny it!

Makes sense. Fender P & Motown = hand & glove, right? I'm not getting another bass! 😂

It's your wife finding out that you should be more concerned about. £20 sales price?? Ok so you're then £20 up. But does that include P&P? And she'll be entitled to 50% of everything else you have including your basses amps and cabs...£20 for all that?! Now that is a bargain! 🤣

10/10. Go to the top of the class! Detention over 😂

Ok cool - I'd want it to double up as a capable drive pedal as I suspect I'm going to have all the amp sims I will ever want (and a ton more besides) in the HX Stomp; so I think for my purposes having a drive that maintains a full low end and mid punch in the form the Grizzly Bass is still going to be the ticket for me. I've not really needed to use the Grizzly or other pedals for Motown style tone shaping as I get pretty much there with a Yammy BB 1025 on P setting and the tone dialled right off; obviously that's not delivering a full tubey sound all by itself which @Clarky is after, although there is a hint of tube growl from the Yammy P pups when you dig in. Thanks for clarifying that for me.

But it has both a gain and master volume, can't you adjust those to equalise the volumes to what it is on clean by-pass?

That's actually a very fair point. It is, no question, in the high end price bracket for cabs and getting things like a quality finish sorted should go hand in hand.

I think he's clearly been distracted by the wife sale he's currently undertaking.

A little off topic, but Is there a loss of low end on the Tonehammer when you're using it fully driven? That's been a big plus point for me with the Grizzly Bass in the way it maintains a fulsome low end when driven, better than pretty much anything else I've tried. Oh...and same point about it's driven tone, is the core tone on the TH mid scooped (which is a feature of a lot of drives) or does it maintain a very decent mid-punch?

Agreed. You said the reason for your edit was to change 'peeing' to 'peeling', but I think you're still taking the p*iss 😁

+1 ^^ Never really paid too much attention to the Tonehammer before listening to your clip @dannybuoy. The pedal is obviously a LOT more spendy than a Mojomojo, but having looked at the spec it's got a number of features that do make it very appealing: Based on the Aggie OBP-3 preamp, which I've only ever heard positive things about on this forum 3 band EQ with fully sweepable midrange DI out proprietary Adaptive Gain Shaping circuitry (AGS). AGS apparently allows the player to kick in an additional gain structure and EQ can now go from modern slap sounds to vintage or overdriven 18 volt operation for additional headroom - also neat if you have an 18V output on your PSU that you can't otherwise find a home for! I recall @krispn doing a long detailed thread on the Tonehammer / AGS a while back - will see if I can dig out and have a revisit for personal interest. PS just seen Clarky's VMT in the FS - yup didn't think it would be too long before it found its way there. Well at least the MM is paid for with some change over! GLWTS

Do let us know how you get on with the Mojomojo and whether it hits the mark for Motown!

I put together my first pedal only a couple of years' back, having been pretty much a pedal agnostic before then. The rabbit hole was a pretty steep one! 😂 I've bought and sold a LOT of pedals since then, 55 to be precise! So it's kinda interesting to look back on my first board and how it compares to my current one. First pedal board Current pedal board What about you guys - what's your pedal board journey been like and what's the single biggest thing you've learned along the way? What did your first pedal board look like and how does it compare to your current board?

Bit cheeky my posting two updates in one month...but having found a decent bitcrush effect on the HX Stomp, I've been able to move on the Mooer Lofi and as I've managed to get round to ordering a reverse polarity cable to connect up a Smoothhound wireless to my PSU that's been able to get onto my board in place of the Mooer. One other nice thing to discover is that the 3Leaf GR2 is 'officially' capable of handling 18V, so I've been able to make use of one of the 18V on my MXR IsoBrick reducing the number of outputs that need to be shared. The Stomp is powered with it's own supply and the remaining 12 units from the 10 output Isobrick which is under the board and which still has juice to spare. Ok, now need to get my head around using midi 😂 Gonna be brave and post what the underside looks like too

Yeah - presets on any pedal that offers multiple setting options ("quasi multifx"), such as this, is a real plus.

I've not had one myself, but the TCE Spark Booster is getting a lot of love on this thread with three BC'ers placing orders for one to take advantage of the sale price at GuitarGuitar - just £39 (normally £59): A couple of comments to pull out from that thread, which suggests that it could also hit the mark (provide the spark? 😁) for what you're after:

Totally agree. It's a classier and more capable pedal, with two interacting drives, than some of the others e.g. the very capable Mojomojo (which I have also previously had on my board) but, as you say, it's a LOT more spendy! Low end is all too often lost with a lot of drive pedals and clean blend becomes essential if you're not going to end up sounding toppy. But obviously leaves your low end not benefiting from the drive. What is great about the Grizzly, and Mojomojo too, is that they both retain bottom end very well. In the case of the Grizzly it does this better than any drive pedal I've come across which allows it to dispense entirely with the need for a clean blend!

@fretmeister and I both have VMT on our DG M900s and @Kev is a pretty BIG DG pedal fan. However, I tend to use my VMT more for out and out drive rather than for a valvey tone, but the other two may have more insight on whether it can be used for what you're after. My view, for what it's worth, is that DG fx, even the VMT despite its 'vintage' moniker, have a trademark modern bright / treble sound, whereas 60s / Motown is much more high-end-rolled-off. This thread might also be useful... Final thought, is this the kinda sound you're looking for?

This is freakin cool! You get to audition all 121 effects on line with the ability add in delay, reverb, different the 'depth' settings and vary between bridge and nec pup. Well done Boss! Boss SY-1

Glad that the ability to play a bit faster with closer string spacings is a 'thing' and not just me spouting off! But it does conceptually make good sense as you have (marginally) less distance to move your fingers or plectrum.

It does indeed look good and is gonna be a million times easier to use than some of the current and prospective market leaders e.g. FI or Source Audio C4 which both require PC editing software to get the best out of them. Some key features which jumped out at me: The SY-1 boasts 121 sounds to play with across 11 types with 11 variations of each. Polyphonic => you can play chords (as well as single notes) without glitching Apparently minimal latency (this is fundamental to a good synth and the key area that I am nervous about with the forthcoming SA C4) But it's going to come with a feature laden price...£175 still that's not outrageous compared to many dedicated pedals (e.g. Darkglass, Aguilar, 3Leaf etc) I do need to see what I can do with my FI when the 3.0 editor is out and explore the synth features on my HX Stomp first, but I'm definitely tempted and promise not have sold mine before you've even bought yours Woody! 😁

HX Stomp (and Floor) patches for download Recently spotted this link on the TB forum: This chap, Jon Willis, created a website for all of his presets which he has made publicly available for free download: http://drtonelab.com/ I'm particularly interested in what he has managed to do on synth - 4 patches uploaded. He apparently has a good fBook page too. [NB I've not checked for viruses etc on his website so any downloads are at your own risk, but someone in the bass community would hopefully have spotted if there were any!]