Osiris

Yeah, it's an odd one. I'd mentioned this on another thread somewhere that after borrowing yours I was so impressed that I picked one up for myself. I'd dialled yours in for that on the edge of breakup sound and it was exactly what I was looking for. However, the one I bought wouldn't go as low gain even with the gain/drive control backed right off, I couldn't get it clean enough so I ended up moving it on. I recently managed to grab an immaculate mk2 off the forum recently and for my tastes it does exactly what I'm looking for, it adds a real pleasing fattnes to the bass in the mix with the band, not an obviously overdriven sound, just bigger and juicer 💦. Think a B15 kinda vibe. Some people have complained about the lack of high end but to me that's part of its appeal and what helps it slot into the mix where I want the bass to be, sitting under the other instruments and supporting them, not clanking over the top of them like modern drives do.

I've just got home from meeting Steve to collect a pedal from him, the pedal itself is flawless and was very reasonably priced. As others have said he's a thoroughly decent chap and we had a few minutes chatting about bass and bands. Cheers Steve!

As far as I could tell, the LPF is something of a misnomer as it appeared work more on the mids rather than the highs. The user manual was a bit vague as to exactly what it's supposed to be doing. The body controls the lows but there's something about the way the mk2 fattens things up which that is more pleasing to my ears. But obviously the only way to know if the Mk5 is for you is to scratch the itch. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts compared with the MK1.

This is purely anecdotal and probably no use to you whatsoever, but here goes anyway... A while ago, Krispn very generously loaned me his Beta mkV for a while and I liked it so much that I bought one. While I had his mkV on loan I tried it against the mk2 and found that I preferred the latter. Now, this is where things get a little convoluted, the mkV I bought was higher gain than Krispn's pedal even at minimum gain. Not hugely so but even at minimum gain it was more driven than I was looking for, it wouldn't clean up enough for my tastes whereas Krispn's did 🤷 I like a saturated tone, not obviously distorted but the fattening of the the tone from the additional harmonics and the mk2 does this brilliantly, I seem to be in the majority of users who like its inherent darkness and fat low end. Ooh err. There's no denying that the mkV is the more versatile of the two but if you're happy with your mk1 (my understanding is the mk2 is the same circuit but with the gain bypass switch) then the mkV may not really bring anything new depending on what you're looking for.

Here's where I bought mine from.

You can get a strap that splits into 2 parts, one for each shoulder to help distribute the weight, although I have no idea what they're called. But if you're not keen on wide straps I'm guessing you're not going to be tempted by something that makes you look like you're wearing a bra...

Just recievied a pedal from John in a very quick and straightforward transaction. The pedal is immaculate, arrived the next day and came in bombproof packaging. John also kept me informed every step of the way too with tracking details and delivery updates. First class service!

Just received a tuner pedal from Chris, it was a good price and he kept me informed every step of the way. Deal in confidence.

Peter bought pedal from me, he paid promptly and let kept me informed that it had arrived safe and sound. Deal in confidence!

Just received a pedal from John, the pedal was immaculate, very well packaged and posted with next day delivery. Deal with him in confidence.

It'd definitely be a handy option to have although with the limited screen space available it'd probably make editing more difficult so I understand why it is how it is. As for the patch scrolling, you never know, that may perhaps come in a future firmware update. Although I don't use that feature myself as I'm only really interested in the 'boring' utilitarian stuff I can see how it'd useful for people with more demanding needs.

I'll need to double check as I've not used my 60B for a while but I don't think it has the option to permanently display the patch name either, it flashes up for a couple of seconds when you change patches but then disappears to display whichever effect block you have selected within the patch. I've had a quick flick through the 60B user manual online and can't see anything obvious to suggest it can be done. But if anyone knows a way to do it on the old unit please post the details.

I've not tried stringing a Fallout with long scale strings but I have fitted long scale strings to several other short scale basses and never had any issues. Yes, you'll get some extra string wraps around the machine heads but I've never had any strings snap, slip their tuning or any other issues. I'd say go for it!

I was out and about earlier and was able to try one of these out to see what I thought, and in short it wasn't bad. Not astounding but not terrible either, and certainly way better than that guy from PMT makes it sound - but having seen a few of his videos and while he's a decent player he does that guitarist playing bass thing of trying to make the bass sound like a big guitar rather than a bass... For context, I have never played the original Hyperdrive so my thoughts are based on this pedal on its own merits. Anyway. The set up was short scale P/J into the pedal into an Ashdown combo with the mid-scoop muppet button off and the EQ flat-ish. The bass was on the P pickup only. It's definitely more of a drive than a distortion, it didn't appear to do crazy amounts of distortion, at least none that I could coax from it, but that's not what I was looking for anyway. The drive character is kind of smooth like it's a soft clipping circuit but with a subtle hard clipping gritty edge. I was trying to dial in a warm pushed valve amp type saturation and it actually did a decent job of copping that sort of tone. If you want Darkglass scooped clank or Sansamp style homeopathic levels of midrange then this is definitely not the pedal for you, it's more warm and vintage than modern sounding. But there were a couple of issues that prevented me from buying it. First up, I struggled to get unity gain with it engaged, the input was up to around 3 o'clock and the gain around noon but even with judicious amounts of clean blended in it was still quieter than when bypassed. But the main issue I had with it was what it did with the clean signal, it applies a weird EQ curve that I found detrimental to the overall sound. The clean signal loses some low end, not by large amounts but noticeable when compared to the bypassed tone. There's also a small cut in the low mids, again not excessively so but enough to stop things getting mushy, not bad in itself but worth mentioning. The mid-mids were still present and there was no fatiguing spike in the upper mids like you get with a lot of modern drives, and the highs seemed to be rolled off adding to the darker, vintage feel. If it left your clean tone alone I think it would have been a more useful pedal, at least for what I am looking for in a drive. For my tastes it sounded better fully wet with no clean blended in. And while it's chunky for what it is, it wasn't as massive as I expected it to be. I'd actually like to try it with the rest of my gear to see how it plays with what I'm familiar with, for example I think it would sound better, at least for what I'm looking for, with some compression before it. But whether I can be arsed to drag all my gear over to the shop for a pedal that I'm ambivalent about...