Al Krow

4 hours ago, dave_bass5 said:

Had a fantastic gig last night. Small social club but it was packed. 
First set went well but no one dancing. Plenty of clapping though. 3 songs in to the second set, we played Valerie. Suddenly about 30 people started dancing, and they were up for the rest of the night. A good vibe on and off stage. 
 

Now the issue i had. We use an XR18 with an external 5Ghz router. It’s been fine up until the last two gigs. Mixing station on the iPad keeps freezing up, or rather lagging,  and it’s hit or miss if we can trust it. The iPad isn’t losing connection, and there wasn’t many WiFi connections showing up at this venue to be causing an obvious issue. My Drummer couldn’t even connect to the XR18 from his phone. The plan is now to use Ethernet from the iPad to the router. We will keep the WiFi going but i feel safer with a wired connection. 
The XR18 itself was fine, no drop outs etc. I’m tempted to also get a new router but I’ll try the cable first. 

Nice one Dave! Thank god for the Zoutons, eh?!

13 hours ago, krispn said:

 

I’d imagine it would translate quite well. I can hear a difference running just my amp versus running my pedal board into my amp. Same way my amp Di is adequate- I never use it but had to recently as my tube pre amp wasn’t giving any sound (turned out it was a simple fix but the amp DI did the job in a pinch). Did it sound ok for the gig yes but it’s wasn’t as enjoyable a sound. I could defo he’s the difference in my IEM’s 

This same question gets asked a lot on forums and there’s been some great demos showing how a pedal can sound like another pedal but I believe Origin are going for more of an experience in both feel and tone. It might not be important to folk for a pedal to feel like an amp if it’s nearly £500 but it’s exciting that we have a recreation of a classic amp that folks are describing as nailing the tone and feel. 
 

Does a 5k bass vintage bass sound better than a £400 bass? Does it feel better to play versus the £400 bass? Not everyone cares for these things but it’s nice when we can feel and hear a difference and that can push something form desirable to must have fall

in love at the first play. 
 

If a £99 pedal can do 80% great but some players live for the last 20% because that’s where the inspiration lives. 

Very nicely put Gav!  Particularly like that final para, albeit the VTDI is £250 not £99, but that's splitting hairs on the philosophical point. Hope you manage to land one used in due course.

I didn't come across the Stone Roses until a few years back. Instantly fell in love with their sound and Mani's awesome bass lines!

RIP - you've gone too soon, but as a musician you achieved so much.

6 hours ago, LukeFRC said:

The bassrig stuff is modelling the preamp, poweramp, reactive load and cab sim that’s been tuned to match the original cab - it’s going to do one thing but it’s going to do it really really well.

the VTDI is a preamp with a simple cab sim at the end, I don’t know how complex it it is shape wise. Where I’ve seen an electrical examination of the VTDI the character knob is a variable eq curve that can dial in a more driven sound, or dial it out (b15 a like)

It’s a great pedal big “I want a B15 sound in a pedal” investigations don’t often mention the VTDI as an option. I think they sit in different categories, an Ampeg sgt would be a closer alternative- or if you really were after two bass amps on a budget the tonex one would probably do it digitally. Origin aren’t doing it in digital, are U.K. made and are aiming at a level of “let’s engineer this thing well” where price point and value for money aren’t their primary driver of what they are doing. 

6 hours ago, krispn said:

Yeah I think the origin stuff isn’t a ‘like for like’ comparison to the other gear out there claiming to do a similar thing. While the question will always be does it sound like… many of these boutique businesses (such as Wren and Cuff with their era correct Muff recreations) it will sound like the particular amp or pedal they have access to which might sound different form your pedal or amp from the same era. 

What Origin are doing is pretty cool and gonna make a lot of people happy who want the sound and ‘feel’ of those classic amps recreated as closely as possible in a compact form. 

Will my tube preamp set to sound like a B15 with eq tweaks sound like the Fifteen? No but it may sound close enough or closer than some other B15 recreations, it may sound good enough but I’ve never played a B15 to compare. 

Im gonna try and pick one up (mostly if a used one comes up) as I think the sound and way people are describing the feel would be the perfect direct to PA for the always on tone and with a simple twist of a knob it would provide the gritty tones I sounds get with other pedals. 

If anyone’s sending one back let me know if you’d be up for some trade and Px discussion I’ve got some gear I’d be up for discussing 😀

2 hours ago, spyder said:

"What Origin are doing is pretty cool and gonna make a lot of people happy who want the sound and ‘feel’ of those classic amps recreated as closely as possible in a compact form."

Summed up perfectly. It's all about the feel.

All good / valid points gents!

Genuine real-world question: how much of the sound and feel is going to be preserved (or lost!) depending on the amp & cab or FoH set-up that you are going through when playing live with a band? What is going to be a "necessary minimum" quality set-up to hear the lush tones this is producing in a live band mix?

50 minutes ago, ra0ulduke said:

 

This is a very old debate that I always find a bit tedious. Some people are only concerned with pure functionality, and yes, the VTDI is perfectly adequate for that, because you can't hear the difference in a live situation anyway. Others (myself included) want that little bit extra, that look and feel. That's not rational, but it's fun. I, for example, find the VTDI very ugly, so I use other preamps. Both approaches are fine.

Sure, but it can also be a question of cost and value for money as well as how pretty the pedals look?

For some folk spending £900 on two pedals, whose job can be done by just one other which is well regarded and well established, for a fraction of the price, is also not going to be rational or potentually indeed affordable. So whilst the discussion may be tedious to some, it can also provide useful information to others?

5 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

Off the bat, the VT’s speaker emulation is that of the 8x10. A lot of the B15 character is from the ported, baffled 15” cab so I expect there’ll be quite a noticeable difference there. If you can turn the speaker emulation off and run through an external IR, that’ll likely get closer. 

Thanks. It is indeed possible to turn the speaker sim off on the VTDI, but I guess I'm looking for a comparison of the two pedals as standalone - shame I no longer have my VTDI otherwise I could have loaned it to you to do a proper A/B, Peter!

47 minutes ago, Killerfridge said:

The VT Bass has the 'character' knob that changes it from B15 to SVT to a mega aggressive drive (according to Tech21)

Exactly thanks. Two Origin pedals under one hood on the highly regarded Sansamp pedal, which is often available for around £150 used. So, back to my question of whether this is a material step up over the much loved VT Bass DI? Look forward to an unbiased A/B of the two in due course.

On 18/11/2025 at 09:55, Linus27 said:

Andertons price is £449 which is inline with the other Bassrigs.

 

Am I right in thinking that if I wanted to have drive, I would have to stop playing, turn the drive dial to suit and then start playing again? There is no way to play with a clean tone and then kick in the drive to switch to a dirty tone on the fly?

That's a really useful point, thanks Linus! So essentially we can go from bypass --> clean or dirty B15 tone, depending on what you have the pedal set on. Tbf I guess that's exactly what you would have to do if owned the amp?

Some great bass tones from this - particularly liked what IMA was producing - that Retro Rock! Ooof! 

Question: how much different / better than a Sansamp VT Bass DI, is this?

She tried the wireless out at a gig on Sat and worked great.

@Woodinblack Do you guys just use the one wireless? Just wondering if there will be interference / drop-outs if more than one of us get the same wireless set up? I note that, in theory, both the Joyo and Lekato have 4 channels.

Amusingly her Lekato wireless via Ali Express arrived in time for the gig, but her AKG D7S from Thomann didn't!

2 minutes ago, tauzero said:

 

Is that the service fee?

Haha - no, simply meant I agree 100% with Rich! I'll edit to avoid any confusion!

7 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

In my experience, the Wi-Fi on the CQ 18/20 is better than both the Soundcraft and basic Behringer mixers. Saying that, there are occasions when even the CQ suffers Wi-Fi issues. The CQ18 and has a built-in touch screen, so you never actually lose control. In hindsight, I wish I had gone for the CQ18 although the size, compared to the CQ20, is an issue. 

 

The good news is that the settings do not change on any of the above mixers if you lose control momentarily (UK meaning not US).

 

I should say that @Phil Starr has an RCF M18 and as far as I know, has never had an issue with the Wi-Fi on that. 

We found the wifi connectivity improved a lot and we no longer suffer drop outs following switching the CQ desk's internal setting from 2.4GHz to 5.8GHz

6 hours ago, pete.young said:

Dynamic pricing?

1 hour ago, Kev said:

 

How does this impact on Dynamic Pricing?  This appears to only apply to resale, whereas Dynamic Pricing is where the real gouging happens.

Yeah fair about dynamic pricing, still being possible.

"Ticketmaster faced intense scrutiny and hundreds of consumer complaints after the prices for both the 2024 Oasis and 2023 Bruce Springsteen tours soared dramatically with high demand, leading to accusations of price gouging. Resulted in a Competition and Markets Authority  investigation. While the CMA did not find evidence of real-time algorithmic "dynamic pricing" in the Oasis case, it did find concerns regarding a lack of transparency about different price tiers and that consumers were not given clear information, which may have breached consumer protection law."

I guess at the end of the day folk can't stop sellers selling tickets at whatever prices people are willing to pay. Same goes for anything that shoots up in value e.g. some bass pedals right? But at least these tickets are being sold to someone who actually wants them - will now be illegal for touts and commercial resale sites to scoop up thousands of tickets purely for resale at massive margins.

And, sure, I appreciate that it's also illegal to sell cocaine and that doesn't stop the equivalent of ticket touts pushing drugs, so the resale of tickets may simply go underground? But I guess the argument goes if coke were legal, take up would be massively higher i.e. making it illegal reduces the supply and demand?

9 hours ago, Rich said:

And about bloody time too.

100% agreed!

2 hours ago, pete.young said:

Dynamic pricing?

Should also hopefully now be history. Can only resell at face value, plus service fee. 

1 hour ago, Chienmortbb said:

 I had a Soundcraft Ui16 for a while and the difference between that and the CQ20 is very noticeable. 

As in the Soundcraft Ui16 was considerably better in terms of pre-amps? 

Personally delighted that the Govt are introducing this reform: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/nov/17/reselling-tickets-for-profit-to-be-outlawed-in-uk-government-crackdown

Great news for those of us wanting to see live music having saved up for the actual face value ticket price (although these can be eye-watering!) and not some ridiculous rip-off figure.

The only remaining fly in the ointment is the continued ability of the online platforms to charge a "service fee", but hopefully this will also be capped to a reasonable amount.

5 hours ago, LawrenceH said:

Hi all. Reviving this thread because I'd like to know if people can comment specifically on the sound quality of these CQ mixers versus the ubiquitous Behringer XR (and X32) series?

 

I've not got any experience using digital mixers but the years have taught me that using good gear throughout a signal chain tends to have a cumulative impact on the overall sound - more than A/Bing individual channels in isolation would suggest. Been using a couple of analogue desks recently with limited feature sets that I find harder work to get sounding good than I remember old Allen & Heath GL series being, where you just plugging in, messed around with the swept mids where necessary, and you were away.

 

That said, how noticeable is any perceived difference in sound quality between the A&H and the Behringer kit, and where is it heard? I'm particularly interested in the basic sound (pre-amp, channel EQ, main bus) but also compressors and vocal reverb.

 

TIA!

Can't comment on how good relative to Behringer as never owned latter. But definitely better preamps and IEM experience than with our Soundcraft Sig.12MTK, and has excellent channel EQ options. Very happy to recommend.

Love this! Inspired me to start getting up to speed on midi (I'm a complete newbie!), but have got myself a Disaster Area 3XL and three of my Boss pedals are midi capable: GT1000Core, SY-200 and the XS-100

Any tips and suggestions very welcome! Also just asked ChatGPT to prepare me a midi introductory course!

2 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Ultimately I think I'm going to have to buy one and send it back for a refund if I can't get it to do what I want.

Fyi BRX - If you end up giving this a good try-out and find it's not for you and are out of time to return it to Music Store who are selling it new for £305 - there are several of us with this on our 2026 wish list (including me!) and I'm sure will be happy to guarantee you a very decent used price for it! If you end up deciding to keep it, given the high synth standards you have, well that would be high praise indeed! 

On 14/11/2025 at 11:05, BigRedX said:

 

Thank you.

 

I've tried to glean as much information from the manual as possible but something it's not always clear especially without the actual device in front of me, so there are a few things I wanted to get confirmed before I decide whether or not to buy one. 

 

To that end I have a couple of final questions before I add it to my Christmas list:

 

1. Will the editor work with the latest versions of Mac OS? Compatibility is currently listed as OSX 10.6 and higher which worries me that it will get left behind in the next year or so. For what I want to do I suspect that without the computer editor I'll be completely stuck. Is an Apple Silicon native version being worked on?

 

2. As it appears that no PSU is applied with the device, can someone recommend a suitable small and reliable PSU to use with it? My only other pedal is the Helix Floor which has its own mains supply so I don't need or want anything big and complex with multiple outputs. Something simple with a mains plug at one end and a 9v plug of the correct polarity (that cannot be changed by mistake) at the other would be exactly what I want.

Hey BRX - super impressed that you're thinking of giving the FI v4 a go given your previous position on synth pedals. IMO it's almost certainly the best of the bunch and on my own wish-list for 2026 especially if the next software update proves to be as useful as we think it might well be!

I can't answer your first query (which I'll leave @Quatschmacher to revert on), but regarding the second just wanted to reassure that I've been fortunate in not having a PSU plug fail on me once during hundreds of gigs for my pedal board, which I use to power a Harley Benton Powerplant for multiple pedals on my board, although with some of my PSUs the wire connections have got worn over periods of time and needed replacing. I guess the safe thing is to take a spare? In the unlikely/unfortunate event of failure, it should take no more than a minute to swap them over during a gig. I agree with you about getting one with the correct polarity rather than risking a polarity reverse add-on, which shouldn't be needed in any event for anything sub 2A. And I'm sure you're already planning on getting one with a decent cable length for ease of use and not going for the cheapest. Appreciate that doesn't directly answer your Q - thought I'd best leave that to an actual FI owner to come up with a recommendation!

If you do go for it, really look forward to hearing how you get on with the FI v4 VIP.

29 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

@Al Krow but a bigger pedal board may not be an option. My Helix which is probably smaller than a lot of people's pedal boards is at the limit of what can be comfortably fitted on a lot a stages I play. Others have already stated that there is insufficient stage space for a keyboard synth. For them a bigger pedal board may well also be out of the question.

 

The tracking speed is worrying. Almost all the synth bass clips I have seen using processed bass guitar are slow to medium paced songs, or ones with a lot of space between the notes in the bass part. Most of what my band play is over 130bpm and the bass lines are mostly 1/8 notes or faster. That's going to be a problem. The other thing I have spotted is that if you are using synth sounds for rhythmic parts everyone will expect the timing to be absolutely spot on because these are usually handled by a sequencer of some sort. Your audience will be able to hear that something is wrong even if they can't pin point exactly what it is. For me the ideal solution which doesn't involve using a keyboard would be to put the bass through a MIDI triggered Filter and VCA device, but I only know of one and that's a relatively large rack-mount unit which is no longer being produced.

Hey BRX - fully appreciate you have a full Helix and adding an additional separate pedal(s) to that doesn't make sense for you.

But for pretty much everyone who is planning to get an MXR (or FI), they will either be upgrading an existing set up, shift something else off their pedal board to accommodate, or get a bigger pedal board. It's what many of us pedal users do very regularly, when the need arises.

I also completely also get your point re. synth pedal tracking - it's a fundamentally important issue for live use and has been picked up by several of us on this thread. Was precisely the reason for my choosing to go with the Boss SY-200 despite it not having as good synth sounds as several other synth pedals - it's my personal compromise and for me considerably better than the "nothing at all" alternative.

41 minutes ago, EmmettC said:

I'm sort of losing patience with the tracking for faster songs with the mxr, so I think I'll try the FI VIP next, @Quatschmacher any ideas when the new presets will be available?

+1^^ re being keen to find out when the next software update will be for the FI. Peter's previously indicated he can't give us an estimated date unfortunately, but will hopefully be sooner than Luke's pedals coming up for sale. 

Helpful comment re. fast tracking on the MXR - thanks!

Also @BigRedX "Also who is to say that someone with a more conventional pedalboard set up already has both room and PSU capacity for an additional synth pedal."  Aww come on 😅?! Anyone on this thread looking to buy the MXR or FI etc will make room or get a bigger pedal board, if they decide to get one. 

@BigRedX - you're obviously happy to use a keys synth and all power to you! 

But a couple of points in your post:

- you say a pedal with an external PSU gives rise to "complications and unreliability"? I'm guessing maybe half of the bass players on this forum use pedals (typically on a pedal board) with an external PSU week in and week out, and we do so without any issues? 

- if, as you say, the audience doesn't notice the difference between us playing a song without any synth, then they're even less likely to notice the difference between a keys synth and a quality bass-pedal synth?

@Dazm66 "It's taken me long enough to play bass to a decent standard and I have no interest in learning keys to get those sounds" You've summed me up in a nutshell when it comes to synth bass!

I'm currently leaning a little to the FI v4 VIP, which is only £20 more new than the MXR, if I do swap from my Boss SY-200, but certainly bass-mates of mine who have upgraded their C4 to the MXR are really happy with the changeover!

On 10/11/2025 at 22:37, Dazm66 said:

Got mine yesterday. Had a play this morning and echo a lot of the above. This is perfect for those of us who might need a synth sound for two or three numbers up in a set. The presets are fab and there’s more than enough settings to tweak. It’s a lot of fun! Tracking is good enough and I hope better when I get it on the board with a compressor. Mr Martin Allison must have amazing technique or there’s some editing in the vids! All in all a very good bit of kit that really does provide the synthiness I need. 

Thanks for that, including the very helpful comment regarding tracking capability = "good enough but not as per IMA's hype" if I've read you correctly? Although tbf I guess completely understandable from IMA, given this is his baby.

An honest review of the new MXR bass synth effects pedal MB301... | TalkBass.com

Just came across this thread on TB - made for interesting reading!