Osiris

Just received a pedal from Paddy, great Comms (especially about his dodgy teeth 🤣) and the pedal was a bargain price in immaculate condition and expertly packed. Can't ask for more than that!

At the risk of stating the obvious, that's definitely not behaving as it should. I've been using a Microbass II for a few years now so know the pedal well and while I tend to use mine exclusively with channels A and B combined, whenever I have run them independently I find that channel B is generally louder than A depending on where the drive/gain is set and usually end up suing a judicial amount of the Boost control on A to balance the respective levels. But fingers crossed it's a simple, or at least inexpensive, fix.

I was able to try one out recently and this post sums it up perfectly. It's very subtle in what it does, you're not going to switch it on and dazzle anyone with an obvious effect. But it's more of a feel thing, it's still very much your tone but somehow bigger, more 3 dimensional, with a subtle compression that slots the bass into the mix a little easier. It's one of those units that, I imagine, some people won't see (or hear) the point of and others will consider essential. It's neither a drive, EQ or compressor but it has subtle attributes of all 3 that adds a pleasing something to your sound. It's one of those things you need to try for yourself to see if it works for you as there's not really anything else to directly compare it against.

As far as I understand it (as in what I read online somewhere), the mk1 and mk2 are the same circuit, it's just the mk2 has the switch that supposedly bypasses the drive section - what they call pre-amp mode. On mine at least you can still get a pleasing very low gain drive with the gain cranked when it's in pre-amp mode so I don't think it's completely bypassed. I tried the Ge version alongside the mk2 a couple of years ago and, IMO, it wasn't a patch on the mk2, the Ge was higher gain and pretty harsh sounding and had none of the warmth and character of the mk2. Best to think of it as a Beta in name only.

It certainly is. A lot of guys use flats on Mustangs, the JMJ comes strung with flats new but, IMO, the bass only really comes alive with a set of rounds. @Lozz196 back off some bass and low mids, not too much, just enough to keep things clear, push the mid-mids, upper mids and treble a touch, add a bit of drive, give the strings a good old tw@tting with a 2mm plectrum and you'll be a punk rock legend once again!!!

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...

It does that - pushed valve amp, just fattening up the sound without obviously distorting it - sound brilliantly. From what I've heard of the MK3 it's more of a modern distortion sound, but the MK2 is definitely more on the vintage side.

Mildred, my love... Oops sorry, just having a flash back 😲 I can't speak for the EBS Microbass 3 but I've been using its predecessor, the Microbass 2 for some time now and it fills your requirements perfectly. It's not obvious from looking at it but you can link the 2 channels to give you a very flexible EQ section with parametric mids, a mid cut/treble boost sweep on the treble control using the filter button, and a broad bell shaped treble boost (preferable to shelving types, IMO) using the Edge control. The gain control on the drive channel goes from clean through some authentic sounding edge of breakup type sounds and beyond. There's also a little valve (or toob* as the cool kids call it these days) simulation button that adds a fatness to the signal without overdriving it. I've not tried it myself but I'm assuming you could use the fx loop return as an aux input too. I don't think it's in production now that the mk3 is out but you can pick up used ones fairly cheaply. *Not to be confused with a certain Manc halfwit.

There's a very favourable review of it linked below. It also has transformer driven outputs which I suspect may make @krispn uncomfortably moist 😀 https://www.compressorpedalreviews.com/post/warm-audio-pedal76-compressor-review

I also replaced the pickup in my Lionel, not that there was anything wrong with the stock pickup and I really like the staggered pole piece arrangement of it too. But as has been said, it's a very modern and clean sounding pickup, not bad characteristics in themselves but it lacks that warmth and low mid thump of the classic Precision sound which is what I was expecting from a bass with a pickup like this. So it might look like a P but it doesn't sound like one. Like the lovely @Adee I swapped mine out for an EMG Geezer Butler and it now sounds more like I want it to, although compared to my JMJ Mustang the pickup in the Lionel is around 10-15mm closer to the bridge so it has a slightly different inherent tone due to its position. The JMJ sounds much more Precision-like whereas the Lionel has its own voice, a bit of the P flavour but not full fat.