Al Krow

Awww...TJ please do NOT get me started on only us bass players ever paying attention to our bass tone and everyone else being completely oblivious to it!! In your case it sounds like not even the bass player is paying any attention to his live tone 😁😂🤣

That's really very kind Luke. If only I didn't already have a B1X-4 (which has the same chip and effects patches as the B3n) I would be finding your offer almost irresistible. Right best head off and go fiddle about on my Stomp...

now, now... 😂

Split that over all Barefaced cab owners and we'll be good 😂

These?

Can you get black staples?

Ah Copydex - is that still around?! Excellent - must get me some!

Yammy BBs & J pup The J pup tends to be viewed as the poor cousin on Yammy BBs and rarely gets solo'd from what most folk have said. I'm 'with the crowd' on this and typically use the P or a blended PJ on my BBs when playing clean. Was messing about with a couple of drive pedals today, and frankly the solo J with a drive pedal blows the P and PJ settings out the water in terms of delivering a meaty drive with great sustain. Guessing this may already be familiar to BB Land - but it was a very pleasant surprise for me and yet another facet to the capabilities of the Yammy BB.

Narrower string spacing potentially allows for marginally faster right hand technique and more importantly puts less strain on the left hand, not least by allowing for slimmer necks whilst also avoiding neck dive. These are both more of an issue with 5'ers. For me, my Ibby SRs with 16.5mm bridge string spacing are an absolute delight to play. But I agree that is at narrow end of what's out there. 18.0mm seems to be a widely accepted compromise between string spacing and not having ridiculously bulky necks. A shout out to the necks on Yammy BB 5ers, they are the opposite of baseball bats and really are very comfortable to play.

Oh dear it's not been a good 'PR' couple of weeks for the Stomp has it? And just when I am finally getting to grips with and appreciating what a good effects-patch software editor HX Edit is! I was even thinking of maybe trading in my little Zoom B1X-4, but sounds like it would useful to keep that around as a back up.

Ibanez BTB? My experience of the Ibanez SR Premium range has been nothing but positive, so I suspect that the BTBs will also be very good!

Haha - well only if folk want to! You don't have to follow this thread matey 😋 But I am genuinely interested to find out what folk think the Stomp does well and what it's not so good at. And who knows, some others might be interested in whether a Stomp is going to cut it for the particular effects they are looking for it to do?

2. Helix Stomp vs Digitec Mosaic (octave up) 1-0 to Mosaic On octave up the Stomp has a slightly clanky latency which feels pretty tinny. The Mosaic is noticeably 'smoother' and provides a very usable octave up. I was kinda hoping for better here on the part of the Stomp as it managed to get a pretty decent octave down: tracks tightly to around a low F# with minimal latency. Tonally a bit bland, but I may be able to sort that separately. Doubt it will ever do an OC2, although I've since been advised to check out the Stomp's square wave capability in that regard. But for thickening up the bass line, which is what I've pretty much used oct down for, it'll do just fine. So no need to splash out on a dedicated octave down pedal for my purposes. However, the Mosaic is definitely staying on my board for now! (sorry @bassfan )

Helix Stomp vs Mooer Lofi (bitcrushers / sample rate reduction) 1-0 to Stomp The Mooer (around £50 from Andertons) is a good intro to the world of bit crush / sample rate reduction but has a very limited usable range pretty much with one parameter. The bit crusher (small knob) is not particularly useful - pretty much just adding white noise. The sample rate reduction (big knob) has a 'usable range' going anti-clockwise from 5pm to 1pm (any futher than 12 noon anti-clockwise and you rapidly get into a beyond human hearing frequencies). My own preference being in the 3pm to 4pm range which does add something to the low E and B strings. The Helix provides a whole range of usefully tweakable parameters on its bitcrush effect and it was fun putting together a 'gated' bitcrush on the Stomp that's only triggered when you dig in hard by setting the open and close levels appropriately. Not something you could being to imagine doing on the Mooer.

The Helix Stomp has clearly proved massively popular as an effects pedal as evidenced by the fact the Mini Helix - HX Stomp thread has more followers and had more replies in the space of six months than any other effects thread ever and there are a lot of us who have splashed out on one. But how good is it really? How does it stack up against dedicated pedals? I know several of us have ditched entire pedal boards in favour of just the Stomp and there are plenty of convenience and cost issues for doing just that. Well it's been out for 9 months now and it would be great to hear your unvarnished thoughts on which dedicated pedals the Stomp holds its own against and which pedals don't yet have anything to fear from this one-stop little wonder box. The story so far: 1. HX Stomp 1 vs Mooer Lofi (bitcrushers / sample rate reduction) 0 2. HX Stomp 0 vs Digitec Mosaic (octave up) 1 3. HX Stomp 0 vs Panda FI (synth) 1 4. HX Stomp 0 vs Boss RC 30 (or virtually any decent Looper) 1

I was disappointed to find out that the Ottobit Jr doesn’t have an output volume control to enable us to equalise the volume to clean bypass. Seems to be a common theme with Meris pedals. It’s kinda annoying that you're "expected" to be bringing extra kit in the form of midi control or a separate volume pedal control to the party to be able to use a £300 Meris pedal to its full potential! Anyway I found some solace by spending a bit of quality time with my Helix Stomp this evening. The bitcrush on the Stomp is without doubt a whole level better than the Mooer Lofi, so my Mooer can get swiftly moved on having had a short but sweet stay on the Krow pedal board! It was kinda fun putting together a 'gated' bitcrush on the Stomp that's only triggered when you dig in hard; dead easy to do by setting the open and close levels suitably. Just as an fyi - the bitcrush parameters available to adjust on the Stomp are also a whole level more sophisticated than those available on the Zoom multis (I've got the B1X-4 and previously had both the B3n and the MS-60B). So I guess that we could reasonably add another bitcrush option to our list: Helix Stomp.

Me neither. Get one of those Helixy Stomp gizmo thingies and you can drop tune or change to whatever key you like at the press of footswitch. Or buy a 5 string. Apparently Yammy make these too. And you can then take the key down by a whole 5 semitones and still sound completely authentic 😁

We don't do boring songs.

Haha - this is going to annoy me now that I've you've noticed it and pointed it out to the rest of us. I suspect the easiest option would be to simply strip the paint back to the natural wood on the headstock, although it shouldn't be a biggie to get it resprayed in midnight blue either. But once I've started meddling I know I'm just going to end up going the whole hog...😁

Please do tell me a bit more as to why the Newtones rather than the LaBellas for you?

Cheers BRX - those alternatives from LaBella and Newtone look good.

Ah yes - I see what you mean. It's natural wood on the side and rear of the P34/5 headstock (which is obviously what I see when I'm playing it) but black rather than midnight blue on the front of the headstock. Must admit I hadn't noticed - so good spot by you! And I agree the HS paint colour should really match the body colour, particularly on their flagship passive BB.