Al Krow

I'll let others with more expertise than me to revert on how band pass filters work...but in relation to your Q: Comments on the net suggest that the 'Old School' and 'Millerizer' controls are just a relabelling of the previous Markbass 'VLE' and 'VPF' filters found on the LM3 . That would obviously make good commercial sense for MBass to be recycling existing tech! VLE = was a treble roll-off and the VPF a mid-scoop - which is the classic setting for slap bass. So if they have swapped the Millerizer for a Semi Para mid EQ, that should give you a fair bit more control and you'll still be able to mid scoop to your heart's content

Cheers Dosi. Agreed the DG pedals are more inherently mid-scooped and fizzy and this pedal doesn't have that baked in in the same way. The fizz I'm referring to, is there where the drive is fully engaged and the high pushed above 2pm e.g. can be heard between 3.20 to 3.35 on your review (and elsewhere). That's the particular tone I'm not a fan of, for my style of playing, but others may be. This pedal can obviously do a fair bit otherwise, but the 'core drive tone' is essentially a fizzy one, would you agree? I can therefore understand your preference for setting this to light overdrive. Btw - I thought your by-passed tone was really good

@Dosi Y'Anarchy - hey thanks for pulling that together and sharing with us! It's a really useful format review - you get a really good sense of what the pedal is capable of.

Looks interesting. Anyone going? Couple of cool offerings from Boss already announced (SY-1 and RC-10R pedals), both of which I suspect I'm going to end up getting! Been a long time since I've bought any Boss kit and it really does feel like they have upped their game recently. If you spot anything that's of interest to us BC'ers please do share them on this thread.

Yeah fair do's. But my simple view is that life's too short - if you're not loving it and in fact it's become a chore, is it worth the grief? In my books bass, bandmates and indeed Basschat are all supposed to be fun and when they cease to be, move on. As Chris profoundly said, there's always golf... 😄

Having recently got a Fearless 112 cab which seems to be able to eat low end for breakfast(!) I thought I'd give the Mastotron as a pure sub generator a spin. Set all the other dials to 'off' / clean and switched the 'Subs' from my usual 2 to 3. Well I'm a convert: this clean sub setting justifies the entry price for the Mastotron by itself! Combine with my Mesa M6 amp's 'pull deep' on bass EQ and WOW - that's one BIG low end!! DOD Meatbox eat your heart out - this set up is actually gonna be 'usable' without recourse to PA sub woofers!

Yay! We may have differed over the years on our view on gear, although I suspect we've ended up a lot closer on that score, than either of us would care to admit - lol! But on this point I'm 110% with you, Chris. For me that feeling of being most 'alive' is when I'm playing bass to an appreciative audience with great band mates. ... and it certainly beats golf 😂

Haha - well this one is going to be your fault Woody (together with my 3 Ibby basses - lol!) That and the fact that Source Audio have taken forever to get their C4 pedal out the door and are going to want us to part with £75 more than this Boss pedal for the privelege, so maybe you've actually saved me some cash for once? Well at least that's how I am going to rationalise it! 😂

Where I'm landing is as follows, the SY-1: is an update of their current SYB-5, but has gone from 11 to 121 available sounds, better tracking and poly capability; seems closer to the SY-300 in terms of available sounds but doesn't have the tweakability or presets of the SY-300. However, importantly, it's just one third of the price and size of the SY-300, both of which are major plusses; has the immediacy and easy work-flow of being able to adjust in 'real time' via six pedal knobs rather than needing to deep menu dive via a PC editor; the flip side, and the only major negative for me, is a lack of presets for being able to switch quickly between your favourite 3 or 4 settings which would have been very welcome for live use; sounds good and tracks well, certainly on normal guitar. Overall - this packs in a great deal and seems to deliver a lot of what we could be asking for when it comes to synth, other than presets. For me, the new Source Audio C4 seems much more akin to the FI in terms of needing to deep menu dive via a PC editor and I'm not yet convinced about the C4's tracking from the short clips I've seen so far - hopefully the final version will prove me wrong and be very good at tracking as that is such a key feature for live use. Whilst the SY-1 doesn't have presets, it's accessibility via its six knobs provides a welcome break from having to menu dive on yet another of my pedals - HX Stomp, FI and two existing SA pedals are plenty on that score! Would love to hear a few more bass focused reviews to see if it tracks equally well on bass. If it does, I'm in!

Rumours of 000s are a bit exaggerated, a paltry twelve pedals in fact. And your request for more fwonk in your life has now been met. I hope it's being put to proper good squelchy use!

That's a really nice story Lee and gonna be a hard one to top: your pedal board came pre-loaded with a future wife!

I don't think dB has a Stomp pedal, just the Native software.

Congrats - I think the new MB ranges looks great. They've taken everything good from the old LM3 and sorted out the EQ centre points to make them much more in line what most bass players would be looking for and remove some of the previous gaping EQ 'holes'. Can't quite work out what, if any, the significant differences between the Little Marcus 800 and the newer Marcus Limited 800 amps are!

@dannybuoy if you refer to the Ed Friedland YT of the Grizzly, which chimes pretty closely with how I find it works, what time reference / pedal settings in that video were you finding it not delivering what you were looking for? Must admit I use the Grizzly as a full bodied dirt rather than for tone shaping as I have plenty of other options for that.

Haha - they're not easy to get hold of to try out! I'm particularly interested in the more compact Dubster 2 or an equivalent from another manufacturer. Not sure what the alternatives are?

Boominess an issue? I guess that's my biggest single concern and using hpf to control would seem to defeat the point of focusing on the low end.

Done! And, even better, it will get an independent, unbiased, 'warts and all' review from a guy who knows his gear! They're easily the best, most useful, reviews in my experience. That's gotta be worth the cost of postage! 😀 PS - given that dirt is inherently compressed not sure what the 'unruly' low end would be that you mentioned coming from a drive pedal? And, if necessary, any unruly low end I presume should be fairly easily tackled by setting an hpf appropriately, to cut at either 30 / 40 Hz or from the first harmonic at 60 / 80 Hz, depending on whether you're using a 4 or 5 string? So maybe take your Broughton on the road with you when you're taking the Grizzly for a spin

Better still, don't take my word for it: I should just put the Grizzly in the post to you and let you try out and you'll be able to hear it for yourself! [Please note, this isn't a general offer to the whole of BC land, as I'm gonna need the pedal myself...but young master krispn has been kind enough to loan me pedals in the past, and even paid for the postage - so I owe him!] "So does the HX Edit nudge ahead of the Zoom editor now you've had a chance to properly compare the two?" I don't use Zoom's own editor but a rather nifty PC Editor by Tonelib which is provided free by its creator online. Still getting up to speed on the HX Editor and the Stomp has a quite a lot more functionality - but it looks like it can do the job pretty well. So happy to use either. "IMO that rules the Q Strip redundant on a pedal board which already features a Stomp" Yup that's kinda where I am landing too and @dave_bass5, who I got the pedal from, made a very similar comment to me earlier today. He, however, doesn't have a Stomp and has been missing his old Q\Strip...or, more likely, I suspect my Q\Strip may well find its way into the FS in the not too distant future. "I was also under the impression that the new BB series were not as full on and possibly more subtle in their voicing that the older BB's" It's a pretty nuanced difference. I don't think you would hear a great deal of difference between my BB1025 and BBP35 in a blind test.

Couldn't see a thread on this, so was wondering if anyone has had or tried one - if so how did you rate it? Could perhaps be more interesting for synth bass rather than normal bass? (Reggae being the obvious honourable exception!) Appreciate this is now out of production, so what's the current competition for this low end beast?

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 😂