Osiris

Thank you for your patronising and condescending post, as charming and adorable as it is. By way of response here's a little extra background information, although the reasonable part of my brain is telling me just to ignore you. More on that later. I've been playing bass and gigging for some 40 odd years, maybe 10 years or so before owning the Trace rig, which I bought new in the early 90's. Now while I don't consider myself an expert on anything bass related I have picked up a few things over the years, including the basics of how to use an EQ as well as what constitutes a workable, usable tone when playing with other musicians. Obviously I wouldn't have been so clued up on bass tone at the point of buying the rig and have vague recollections of being caught up in the hype at the time as it was the rig to been seen with. I have played through many different amps over the years from cheap and cheerful starter amps through to high end gear, and have been able to get a usable sound from just about all of them. Notice I say a usable sound, that's because I'm not trying to get 'my sound' because what sounds good when I'm noodling away at home doesn't necessarily translate to what sounds good and/or works in the mix with a band. I consider myself a 'live' bass player and have played hundreds and hundreds of gigs over the years with many different musicians. So I EQ in a sound that works with whatever is going on around me. But most amps have a baked in sound and some of them take more time to dial in than others. And one or two haven't been able to give me what I needed no matter what, and one of those happens to be the Trace Elliot SMX I owned and gigged for some 10 years as well as the other SMX rig that I mentioned. During the years of ownership - believe it or not - it did actually cross my mind to try tweaking the EQ and various other controls to try and get some other sounds out of it, and I did exactly that on countless occasions. Yup, I really did, I even tried switching the mid scoop button in and out 👍. But no matter what I did with the various EQ options, pre-shape buttons, tilt control, pre-amp voicings etc it just had this constant baked in sound that sounded weak and gutless to me, there was no noticeable weight/heft in the lows, at least none that projected through the pair of Trace 1153 cabs that I was using, there was an ever-present mid scoop that even a sad face graphic EQ curve could seem to fully alleviate at least not in any meaningful way to my ears, and there was an ever present fatiguing spike in the upper mids/treble that I could never fully attenuate either. There is of course the possibility that my amp was faulty in some way, or maybe it was Friday afternoon special put together when the Trace guys got back from the pub? Are there any any known faults with the SMX series that match what I was describing it'd be helpful to know that, why not share that information if you have it? But I grew to hate the amp with a passion and if could have afforded to replace it sooner than I did then I gladly would have done. Since then I have played through a Trace combo, not sure of the model number but it was the simpler 7 band EQ model, and that had all the punch and weight that TE are renowned for, it was indeed a great sounding amp - but it was also the polar opposite to what I could get from the SMX during the years that I owned it. So I'm not anti TE, just anti the SMX series simply because the 2 different ones that I have played over the years sounded gutless, more like a guitar amp than a bass amp. That's just my experience and yours in obviously different, and that's great. But why not share your experience instead of assuming that I don't know my arse from my elbow? Surely that's the point of a forum like this? Or maybe seek some clarification on the assumptions you immediately made - including the one that I had no idea what I was doing? That would have been more helpful and maybe even have helped to make yourself look less of an arrogant tool who posts ill considered knee-jerk responses? You are, of course, entitled to your opinion - just as I am entitled to mine. And yes, maybe if I'd have added an emoji or 2 to my original comment it would have made it clear that the comment was intended tongue-in-cheek, even though it's still my opinion that the SMX remains the biggest turd of an amp I have ever played through. It looked great, and I liked the dual band compressor, but that was it, IMO/IME. Congratulations, you have the dubious honour of becoming the first person in my 14 years on Basschat to be added to my ignore list.

How's the neck binding? Is it square edged or more rounded off? I do like the look of a bound neck but find that they can be uncomfortable to play if they're not rounded off.

Another unashamed LMB-3 fanboy here! It was one of the first pedal compressors I used some 20 odd years ago after coming from the dual band compressor on the Trace Elliot SMX* amp I'd had for years before. I gigged my first LMB for a few years and then decided that I needed something 'better' i.e. more expensive, and so I wandered off down a long and costly road of trying and owning many, many different compressors including a couple of rack units, some but not all of the top tier pedal comps, both analogue and digital, some multi-band, some with clean blends, some coloured, some transparent and so on. All these helped me to identify exactly what I wanted from a compressor. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to pick up a new LMB-3 for very little cash, I grabbed it more out of sentiment as I had good memories of my first one but as soon as I fired it up it just felt right, it was giving me exactly what I'd been trying to get from all the other units, some were closer than others with a notable mention to the Darkglass Hyper Luminal (cheers @krispn👍) on the Buss setting being the closest to what I was chasing. The Boss is a simple pedal, it's cheap and it doesn't do anything flash or have the advanced features of more sophisticated units - indeed one of its four controls is useless unless you really need to add some hiss to your signal - but it is a superb sounding little unit, IMO/IME and the punchiest one out of all that I've tried. It's not totally transparent but doesn't colour your sound noticeably either. But it just sound right to me, it's quick and easy to dial in, it keeps my signal in check and adds a pleasing punch to the mids that always brings a smile to my little yellow plastic face 😀 *Don't believe the hype on the TE SMX amps, mine at least was terrible, absolutely gutless and no matter what you did with the multitude of tone shaping controls it just made you sound like Mark King, but with no low end as well as that endless void in the mids. So in reality it was just a treble booster that was unnecessarily heavy! I had the misfortune of playing through another at a shared gig around 10 years ago and it sounded just as bad.

I've had a couple of orders from Thomann this year and they have arrived in around 4 or 5 days after placing the order, I never had any additional fuss or hoops to jump through, so finger crossed you'll have the bass early next week 👍

I found exactly the same thing with my JMJ, it sounded a lifeless and lackluster with flats but really came alive with rounds, it just sounds bigger, clearer and way more versatile.

Cheers EZ, looks like there's 5 colour options, the pinky/purple above, turdburst, black, shell pink and my fave of the bunch, sea foam green. https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_mv_4msb_gotoh_sfg.htm

Yeah, take one for the team, Stew I'm sorely tempted by one for the money, although it looks like it's only a single volume control so doesn't look like any pickup blending options, plus I'd have to ditch the tort scratch plate because, well, it's tort 🤢🤮 But even with a couple of cheap and easy mods it could well be a lot of bass for not much money. So it'd be great to get an objective hands on opinion of one.

I reckon if you lobbed it at someone it'd pretty much take their head clean off their shoulders

I've had one and like it a lot. For the money you get a lot of useful and usable features especially when compared to some other bass pre-amp pedals. The EQ is simple but very effective and will dial in petty much any sound you're likely to need. The centre frequencies don't seem to be stated anywhere but they feel like they're in about the right place, the bass EQ control is a little low for my tastes but I play short scales exclusively these days so the inherent short scale tubbiness could be part of the issue here, although I only use it for cutting rather than boosting as that helps to add clarity with a shorty. The mid control has a wide sweep and goes from scooped slappiness to a nasal grunt. The treble control is pretty much where I want it for adding clarity without getting brittle and even rolled right back it still leaves the tone with a usable amount of definition. The compressor feels like it's an optical design although this isn't explicitly stated anywhere. I'm not really a fan of optical compressors but it works well although it's not always quick enough (there's no Attack control) to catch big spikes, this could be an issue if you slap but it works well enough with finger and plectrum styles. The release is also quite slow and cannot be adjusted. It also has a clean blend for dialling in some parallel compression. The threshold control seems to have a limited usable range, essentially only really usable below around 9 o'clock with passive basses, I suspect a hot bass could be problematic. There's a single LED meter but you can feel the compression kicking in before the LED lights up so it's kind of redundant. It's not my favourite compressor but it does the job. The drive section is excellent, IMO. It's more of a warm and rounded pushed valve amp type of drive so if you're looking for a Tech 21/DarkGlass scooped clank look elsewhere. It seems to have an inherent mid boost (think Tube Screamer style drive) and a fixed clean blend, both of which work really well when playing along to backing tracks. At low gain it does a good 'hint of breaking up' sound and when pushed it gives a pleasing smooth distortion, neither fizzy or bloated. There's a toggle switch to change the position of the drive and compressor, I personally like to use to comp before the drive so that it can be kicked in for a gain boost. But using comp after drive gives a more controlled tone. The pedal itself is reassuringly heavy and feels well made and pretty much bomb proof with solid feeling footswitches. I'm not overly enamoured with the anaemic pissy yellow finish, the white lettering will make it a nightmare to read on a dark stage but the blue LED's in each control will help you see where things are set in the dark, but due the pedals colour scheme you'll need to memorise which control does what if you want to change things on the fly on a gig. In summary, I think the colour scheme is a questionable design choice, black lettering would have made more sense than white, IMO. But blue LED's are cool, they just are. The compressor is good but not great and the pedal itself feels solid and has excellent EQ and drive sections.

Can't praise John enough for going above and beyond the call of duty with the help he gave me when fitting one of his looms. He was an absolute gent and very patient throughout! Cheers John!

How about a Source Audio Aftershock? You'd need to sit down, plug it into the PC for a while but with 44 different drive engines to choose from - you can even run 2 together, either in series or parallel - plus clean blend, high and low pass filters and a 4 band fully customisable EQ including 2 fully parametric mid bands you'll be able to dial in exactly what you want if you're happy to put the time in. And coincidentally, I might be putting one up for sale soon, only a couple of months old so it's still immaculate with the box and all the accessories. And yes, I have no shame 😁

There is a 3 way mini toggle switch on the pedal that allows you to quickly switch between 3 different sounds, you just need to bend down to change it with your fingers, you can't do it with your feet as the switch is between 2 of the control knobs. Plus you can press and hold the foot switch for a second to access another 3 presets. This is all on the pedal itself without any of the additional MIDI hardware!

The Source Audio Aftershock does indeed sound like it'll provide just about everything you want, the only thing missing being a DI out. It has a clean blend and you can save up to 6 presets on the pedal itself, either creating your own from more than 40 different drive types, each patch can use 1 or 2 drive types (or engines as they're called) either cascaded into one another or in parallel. You have a fully configurable 4 band EQ with 2 parametric mid bands plus high and low pass filters. Plus, there's a guy who lives just down the road from you who may be looking to sell one that's immaculate, it's only a couple of months old and is still boxed with all the goodies 😀

Before buying a pedal see how close you can get with the Magellan. Engage the drive channel - obviously! Then switch to Contour B, the mid boost with the orange LED, adjust that to taste while backing off the bass EQ (Lemmy used to dial his to zero) and boost the treble. That should get you somewhere near there but you may well struggle to get enough highs and clank with flats.

Take a read of the link that I posted on the first page.

As Jean-Luc says above they're actually doing different things despite being called the same name! The Thumpinator will cut the subby lows from your signal which in turn will make your amp have to work less hard and reduce the strain on your speakers, as well as helping to tighten up your low end. The HPF on the Cali is used to remove the lowest lows from the compression circuit only, not from your signal, if that makes sense? By reducing the deep lows going into the compression circuit the compression is not being triggered by the low lows which can reduce the whole signal down and can dull the high end frequencies. By removing the lows like this the compression is triggered more by the mids and highs while the lows are left alone. This might sound counter-intuitive but it actually makes the lows sound deeper and fuller. So despite the confusing naming convention they are 2 different things doing 2 different jobs so no, you're not wasting your money 😀

Sounds like you have the gain set right, but try backing it off a bit next time and turning up the master volume. I don't think I've ever had the master above 9 o'clock on mine, if so not my much, and it was really loud - as it more than loud enough for most situations - and I'd expect it to be just as loud if not louder through a BB2. Are you using an active bass with the lows boosted by any chance? Or using a big bass boost on the amp, including pre-shape A? Or anything like a filter pedal that's pushing huge low end spikes through to the amp? Failing that it sounds like the amp may possibly have developed an issue.

Got to admit that I've not looked at the configuration thingy lately so not certain what options they currently offer. My Lionel has the stock black label pickup and despite being initially unsure about it - like you a bit too modern, but I have vintage vibes more than covered by my JMJ Mustang - I've grown to love it. The pickup position is actually 10-15mm closer to the bridge so you don't get that classic Precision sound unless you play right over or just in front of the pickup. But the pickup position naturally pushes the right hand back a bit so the inherent tone is pretty unique, you have that low mid punch but with some extra clarity.

If you order directly from Sandberg and use their online configuration thingy you have a choice of pickup options so you can choose whatever suits your needs. I previously had a passive TT4 with Hausell pickups and it was a classic jazz tone only a bit bigger sounding!

That's a bit worrying especially as I have both the 350 and 800 watt versions of the amp and never had this even with the 350, it's never come close to it sounding like it was struggling even with loud drummers. But I have a few questions to clarify what was happening. Was the clip light flickering on the input gain for the clean channel? It's a red LED that lights up if you overload the input, and if you're overloading it constantly it will produce a nasty distortion. If it is, just dial back the clean volume control until it stops flickering or lights up very occasionally. Had you got the drive channel engaged? Not that the drive channel gets unpleasant even at full gain! What speakers were you using? Your own or something in a rehearsal room that could possibly have had years of prior abuse? And the 800 is an obscenely loud amp, what situation are you in where you need to push the power amp that hard??? Just trying to figure out if the amp is potentially faulty or if it's something else 😉

Thanks for the graphs. I briefly had one but just couldn't get a sound that I was happy with from it, it just sounded overly scooped whatever I did with it, same with the Tech21 Bass Driver. When I eventually dialed in a passable tone the blend was right backed off to fully clean which kind of defeated the point of it, IMO. So I shifted it on and went through a shed load of other preamp pedals before setting on one that gave me what I wanted. But it's good to know that it can get flat even if (assuming I understand you correctly) you are effectively bypassing the tone controls.