Osiris

I'd forgotten that one, thankfully. But yes, you're right, what a dreadful load of 💩 that is.

I'm struggling to condense the number of songs that I truly hate with a passion down to 3, so many spring to mind. But a few that have unequivocally earned their place as the most nauseous noises ever made include; Fairground by Simply Red. Words cannot truly convey the extent of my loathing for it. I can't stand anything that SR ever recorded but this is unquestionably the biggest stool, among many many others, squeezed out by that ginger tosser. I will always love you by Whiney Houston. It just makes my ears bleed. Come on Eileen has already been mentioned, and rightly so. That so called 80's anthem of the working man, it starts with a steady snare crack followed the melody line played on a £20 Casio keyboard from Argos, then Springsteen's laryngitic wail starts to defaecate over the top, Baaaarrrrrrrn inna you essay. How does a third rate pub singer go on to be so huge for so long? Wrong in every conceivable way.

Err, weren't you recently bemoaning the fact that you didn't like the Future impact because you didn't want to be tied to a PC for editing??? Editing the Stomp via the pedal interface is a breeze, plus being familiar with it will help when making edits on the fly on a gig. I only HX edit for backing up patches.

To use the local parlance, do what, me duck?

Met with Frank this morning for a Basschat dodgy car park deal, where he passed on a pedal board he was giving away. I was expecting something old and battered but it was new, as in still wrapped up new. Once I realised my folly I offered to pay for the board, but the payment was commuted to a coffee and an attempt to put the world to rights at a later date. Frank is a true Basschat legend, deal in confidence.

Cheers Frank, it was an all too brief pleasure. How'd it go with Pope Frank?

@cocco The Stomp will certainly be able to split your signal through a crossover and allow you to build the signal path you describe. I'm not too familiar with the LT, but I think I'm right in saying that it will allow you to use more blocks (blocks are what Line 6 call each individual effect in the signal chain). There is currently a limit of 6 blocks on the Stomp, but the good news is that you wouldn't need to allocate one of these to a crossover as you can drop one in between blocks at whatever point in the path you wanted, so that would effectively give you 7 blocks. For example, you could set up a signal path something like this; Crossover, then lows going through a compressor into an amp & cab model (or just an amp or just a cab). Maximum of 2 blocks. The high signal path could go into a Sansamp model (I actually prefer the Helix model to the real thing as its easier to put the mids back in) into an amp & cab model. You could even mix and match guitar amps and cabs here, but if you were to mix a bass amp with a guitar cab they would need a separate block each. Maximum of 3 blocks. Your can then either blend both signals back together or route them to separate outputs if you're running more than one rig. Like the crossover, you'll get the mixer to blend the signals back together for free so it won't use another block. The only potential issue with using the Stomp for this is that a signal path like this will only leave you a block or 2 for other effects. But that's obviously not an issue if you're not a big effects user!

Excellent work @51m0n

Badmotorfinger is the king of the hill for me, Chris Cornell was one of the greatest rock singers of all time. I still listen to and love that album, Room a thousand years wide being the highlight for me. Whereas Anthony whatshisname is arguably one of the most atrocious singers I've ever heard, he's on a par with Springsteen. Flea is is an amazing bass player but the whole slap thing leaves me cold so this is definitely the worst of the 3 in my ignorant, ill informed opinion. Nevermind was, and still is, fantastic so that comes a close second to Soundgarden.

Compression is one of those areas where you really need at least an appreciation of what's going on to get them to work for you. You have to think more like a sound engineer than a bass player because compressors, as I'm sure you know, control and compress your dynamic range - they're not an effect in the same way that something like a flanger or delay is, and I think that's where people get confused by them as they're expecting an obvious change in the sound. But think of it in terms of controlling your sound so it sits better with other instruments and you'll start getting better results. It's definitely something where it's worth doing your homework. Another idea could be something like a limiter. Set it up so the threshold only cuts the spikes that are peaking the desk. Could that work? But there's plenty of different compression models in the Stomp to play with, some simple, some more complex. Have a play, see what each one does and what ones you like best. My own experience is that not all of them give me what I want on bass, but that's not to say that they won't work for you. Once you've got to grips with the basics try playing with them in parallel signal paths with crossovers too to mess about with mixing in clean signals Likewise, I use my Stomp for the amp/cab sims and compression. I gig with in ear monitors so I have a patch set up for each bass that I gig with, each patch having an amp/cab sim and compressor that are always on, with footswitchable drive and pitch shift for drop tuned songs. For my needs it's the perfect single box to drag along on a gig.

@Salt on your Bass? I'm just a few of miles down the road from Rushden, I reckon I'll be able to hear every note of that beast when you fire it up

Definitely set your patches up through whatever you're going to be gigging with, I made that mistake, I originally set them up at home through headphones and on the first gig with the Stomp they sounded utterly 💩, way too dark. It took more than a quick EQ change to rectify the sounds I wanted when I borrowed one of our PA cabs to set the sounds up again, but I got there in the end. Save yourself the time and effort and go straight to the QSC

Yes, I think that the ACO patches are acoustic ones. Whether any are actually configured for acoustic basses is another matter!

Compression is a bit of a black art and very easy to screw up as you seem to have found out At the risk of sounding patronising, (and I'm not meaning to be) are you familiar with compressors? Do you understand what the various controls do and how they impact your sound? If not, then it's definitely worth taking the time time get an appreciation of what the various parameters do as this will enable you to dial in exactly what you want. There are different types of compression, some obvious, some more subtle, so you need to know what you're aiming for and then use the knowledge of what the different controls do to try to achieve what you want. There's a very useful guide on the Ovnilab site and @51m0n has written a sterling guide to compression basics. Both of these will be able to educate and inform you way better than I ever could @Al Krow often badgers me to share my settings with him but ultimately there are so many variables when it comes to compression that what woks for me is almost certainly not going to work for you. Different playing styles, different output basses, different tastes in compression etc. can all have a marked effect on how a compressor will react to the individual playing. For the record, I use the Stomp Multi-band compression for each of my gigging basses. Each one is set up differently to compliment the bass and the style of compression I like, but generally speaking it's a low-ish ratio, fast attack with slower release times. After that everything else is a matter of taste, the various thresholds, gains, crossover points and so on. Having re-read this I can see how unhelpful it is

Did you buy the Stomp new? If you bought used, I think there was an issue with the recent firmware updates where, if they weren't done exactly to the letter, there were issues. If I remember correctly one of these issues was that the pre-set names didn't appear - either correctly or at all. Maybe the previous owner made a mess of the firmware upgrade, perhaps? If you did buy it new, then I have no idea. Maybe try the view button (the one with a house icon on it) as @krispn suggested. Failing that, see if there's a way to reset the unit to its original factory settings. You may then need to reinstall the more recent firmware updates, but it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Thanks @MoonBassAlpha it's something to investigate. Our keyboard player is an electronics engineer, I'll ask him if he wouldn't mind taking a look.

OK, understood. In that case it's sounds like it's a case of using the tried and tested method of playing it slowly at first until you get the feel and the timing right and then gradually increase he speed until you can play it at the correct tempo. Use a drum machine or metronome to keep things steady. And if you can play it smoothly even quicker than you need to you'll have no trouble with it.

I'm not totally sure I understand what you mean by this, is it that the octave note isn't loud enough? If that is the case, there are a couple of non-technique related things you could try that may (or may not) help; First, how are you EQ'ing your sound? Try adding some upper mids to help give some extra definition to the octaves to help them stand out. Are you using a compressor? If not, they are an invaluable tool to help even out all notes from across the fret board. Are you popping the note as in the slap sense? Maybe try plucking it instead? The octave pull/pop thing will give you a bright snap but plucking the note will give it more body. Other than that, as you say it's just a case of keep working away at it until you get it right.

How about a graphic EQ pedal? Assuming that you like the fundamental sound of the Fishman on both basses and it's just a tonal change you're looking for it could potentially work out as a cheaper option than those you had proposed in your original post. For example, set up the Fishman for the fretted bass and have the EQ pedal set up with a sad face (boosting the mids while rolling off the highs and lows) for the fretless). Could that work?

That looks great. Do the pickups work well together? I'm guessing that the bridge will help add some clarity to the meaty humbucker?

No, I've only tried this with passive basses, neither of which have hot outputs. There is also an input trim pot on the Smashup, the optimum position for this so that it doesn't clip is around 80% open, but even with the trim set at minimum the whistling is still audible. I even tried it with no bass plugged in and the cable removed and it was still doing it!

OK, thank you. Good job I didn't rush in to ordering one in that case! I was trying a few things earlier, I even moved the pedal to the next room and ran it into the amp with a 6 meter cable, but it's still whistling. Also tried swapping cables and even a different bass but I still couldn't get rid of the noise. Looks like it might be time to get something to replace it. Unfortunately, the Smashup is no longer made, which is a shame as it has some great sounds in it. Ah well.