bobbass4k

Not [i]strictly[/i] an effect, but effect related. Anywho, how do people rate [url="http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?moduleno=31292"]these[/url] power banks from maplins? I've seen quite a few in the pedalboatd porn thread. The 6 connections will be enough for me, but are they any good? To be honest £20 for a power brick seems a lot to me, but it's pretty much the cheapest i can find, AND it's from maplins, quite possibly my favourite ubiquitous chain store. cheers

I'd say the [url="http://www.smokeyamps.com/"]smokey[/url], but I imagine a bass would make it actually smoke

An xp-100's cropped up on evilBay, I managed to find some suprisingly helpful videos on youtube, a bassist doing pretty thorough play tests of the xp-100 and the bass whammy, all the vids are [url="http://www.youtube.com/user/10000Names"]here[/url], sounds pretty good to me, at least for what i'll use it for, so i'm gonna brave evilBay and give it a shot, anyone know how much 2'nd hand xp-100's usually go for? It is pretty battered, but allegedly it's all cosmetic, which i can certainly live with. Unfortunately the guy's listed it as rare.....so every two-bit well-off idiot who's never even heard of a whammy pedal will buy it just to sell it on for twice for price......which is why i call it evilBay No real reason for the new post......just the thread could use some closure..... cheers

If you're set on a combo, then a trace will do you right, but i agree for that kind of money a h+c makes much more sense. I'd probably say again an old Trace cab, a 1x15" and a 4x10 is my personal reference, but there's pletny of size combinations out there. Brilliant clarity and low end but very punchy mids too, and they're built like big green carpet covered tanks, my combo's been dragged to every seedy pub in a 50 mile radius in the back of a citroen picasso, and ne'er a scratch. Don't get one if you have a cat though, mine's destroyed the carpet on one corner, and the entrie thing is covered in a layer of cat hair........ Head wise I can't help you, but to be honest I wouldn't say a trace, for that kind of money you can do better, eden, markbass, marshall etc. My dream head is a Sunn 0))), but each to their own

[quote name='cheddatom' post='257407' date='Aug 7 2008, 05:27 PM']Interesting. I think your reverb might disapear when playing in a band, which is why I asked. Are you using it to simulate a live room kind of sound, or is it a big long reverb, like an effect rather than a tone.[/quote] I used reverb in my old band, i had a a holy grail that i unfortunatley sold, i loved that pedal, I used it as an effect, it didn't get lost in the band mix, but it was a post-rock/soundscape band (we were just ripping off mogwai and didn't want to admit it), and you can only really get that sound live when everything is saturated in reverb, but my bass lines were quite prominent too. I can see in your point, in a conventional 4 piece rock band, it probably wouldn't fit and get lost in the mix I should probably answer the original question, eh? I would go for 3 effects that need minimum adjustment, and are generally used together, probably Phaser, Flanger and MAYBE an auto-wah, or ring-mod filter type thing, if it fits your sound, but a chorus or compressor seems more sensible

[quote name='phil_the_bassist' post='283201' date='Sep 13 2008, 03:09 PM'][attachment=13308:DSC00313.JPG][/quote] I see you like big black russian balls That joke was so bad i think i deserve to be banned....... on a less innunedo laden note, i didn't even know EHX made russian bassballs, does it sound any better than the american piece o' crap?

Pelican - March Into The Sea (The full 20 minute original, none of this 11 minute edit crap)

[quote name='Oscar South' post='283130' date='Sep 13 2008, 12:38 PM']I messed around with my friends a while ago, works fine with bass. Be warned though, its almost entirely unusable in any bass playing situation.[/quote] I'm not worried about that, I play weird post/noise/experimental rock weirdness, for one of my old bands songs i played bass with an xbox360 controller.......a whammy's just what i need, i also play guitar So any more opinions on which version? I know general opinion is the wh-1 sounds better than the wh-4, but is it so much better that it's worth paying more for a 2nd hand wh-1 than a new wh-4? Does the xp-100 offer anything more than the wah features? I've got a wah pedal i'm very happy with so i'm not too fussed about that. cheers

My student Loan's imminent, and who needs food or textbooks when there are whammy pedals? So any opinions on how the wh-4 (or any of them, except the bass whammy) treats bass? I'd always assumed it would be terrible, being a pitch shifting pedal i imagine it would have to be designed for a specific frequency range, but purusing the pedalboard porn thread, i've seen a lot more wh-4's and wh-1's than i'd expect, so they must be half useable. edit: i know there's the bass whammy, but i've been looking on and off for a few months and only seen two, both on the wrong side of £350

I've no idea what's wrong with it, i jacked in and turned it on like i've done a thousand times and it just hummed, no matter what i do to it or set it at, it just hums, the "gain-o-meter" isn't lighting up, the output knob's always been a little scratchy, and it still scratches, but it doesn't make a difference to the hum, i've tested the speaker with other stuff and that's fine, so it's defenitley the head, i've taken it out and had a butchers, and nothings visibly blown or shorted, i'm half compotent with electronics, but i've no exeprience with amps so i'd much rather take it to someone who know's what their doing. What are the Northallerton guy's rates? Does he charge to take a look, charge for parts, charge if he can't fix it, replace it if he kills it etc.? Cheers

After reviewing my shiny new cherry pop fuzz, i got an itch to review this thing, the only other pedal i have at the moment. Don't worry, this should be a lot shorter than the cherry pop review. I bought this new about 3 years ago, as the pics at the bottom show, it's a little worse for wear. Paid about £95 for it. Ease of use: 7 On paper it's very simple, you step on it and it goes, rock forward for treble sweep, backward for bass sweep, right? Yes, but there's more. There are 2 controls, volume and Q control, which is essentially a filter, but that's for the sound section. These are controlled by 2 of the smallest knobs I have ever seen, in one of the most inconvenient locations I have ever seen. They're on the same side as the output jack and 9v jack, at the top of the rather large pedal. To be honest though it's just an inconvenience, there are only 2 of them, and you have to adjust them by ear anyway. But the size of the knobs can be annoying, you often find yourself adjusting the other one by accident because they're so close together. There's also an extra control, a trim pot on the inside of the pedal, that adujsts the delay between the bypass switch been pressed (rocking the pedal fully back) and the wah disenganing. I can say why they put it on the inside, because it's the type of thing you set to your preference and leave there, but it's fairly inaccesible, and is directly on the pcb, so adjusting it involves poking your fingers or a screwdriver around rather sensitive electronics. I don't mind this, but obviously a lot of people might.Battery access is via a cover on the back plate, the battery fits into a cut hole in the pcb, which again is proably not the best idea. It's also got a 9v boss type power jack Sound Quality: 9 In design it's your average rip off bass specific pedal. They take the regular guitar pedal, extend the frequency range down to the lows, call it the bass version and double the price. But it does it well. If you want the classic crybay guitar tone on bass, then you've got it, lovely classic wah. As mentioned it's only got two(three really, but i'll get to that) controls, volume is your regular output control, eitheir set it to equal with your clean singal, or set it higher for a volume boost. The Q control essentially controls the wah intensity, it's a sort of fiilter, it controls which frequency the effect is applied to, left for mids, right for highs. Yup, the wah can't be applied to the lows, which is how it delivers on it's promise of an intact low end, because the low end is effectively unprocessed, bit of a cheat, don't you think? Not really, I didn't buy it with the intent of using it for low end, i bought it for solos, mid punch, and interesting effects, which it delivers, And even if you play in the low C range, you still get a bit of wah. Having the q control high qives you a really singing, very vocal sounding wah. Rolling the q back, the highs are still effected, but they don't sing as much. With the pedal rocked back, you get a booming mid range, if you've got a steady foot (or something to wedge it), you can use it to provide a boomy, punching mid boost on any range, as you only get the wah sound by rocking it back and forth. And here im (for me at any rate) lies it's brilliance, i use it more often as a faux flanger, phaser, chorus, and even a tremolo, than as a wah. The wah sounds great, but on bass, it only really fits in funk, or in solos and lead lines. If however you're of a more experimental mind (as i like to think i am), you can get some truly unique sounds out of this. With the Q about 3/4 turned, and my cherry pop fuzz before it i can get a wall of noise, then slowly push the pedal closed, and get a great kinda synth filter effect on the dissonance, very atmospheric. As mentioned there's a trim pot to adjust the delay between the bypass witch been pressed (rocking the pedal full back) and the wah disenganing, personally I have this set to zero, but you can vary it from zero to about a second. To be honest, I'm not sure if it's true bypass or not, none of the dunlop litearture i got with it, or found, mentions it being so, but i haven't noticed any loss of clean tone at all, if someone told me it was, i'd believe them. Reliability: 8 As the pictures show, mines suffered some serious cosmetic damage. The clip on the battery cover broke off about 6 months after i got it, so i taped over it, when i ripped the tape off, it took the black matte paint with it, it scratches off without any effort, considering it's on the bottom, this isn't good. The white paint on the rest of it is a lot better, after 3 years of punsihment, there's only a few scratches, and small chips under the actual moving pedal part where it recieves the most hammer, the top and the bypass switch at the bottom. This is all cosmetic though, the thing itself is very solid steel, it's designed to be stepped on. As mentioned before though, you have to poke around in the innards to change the battery or adjust the delay pot, which is the case with a lot of pedals, but in most pedals the area you open up isnt near the pcb, in my old russian muff, the battery cover opend up to empty space. There're also 2 cut holes at the top, for the rotary mechanism, which open up to the innards, some stray sweat, water or beer (a regular experience of my gigging) could cause a lot of damage here. There's also the actualy rotarty mechanism itself, it's a kind of cog and teeth thing, this takes all the weight you put on the pedal, and is plastic, compared to the rugged metal of every other part. When i got it i was quite wary of this, but after 3 years it' still intact, so it must be tougher than it looks. The pedal ships with this mechanism greased, the grease has a low melting point, so it melds under friction (i.e when you use the pedal) and then resolidifys. This is a great idea, but mine wore of rather quickly, i just use a regular small dollop of nonconductive grease and it's fine. Customer Support: N/A Never had to use them , but i've heard good things Overall: I love this thing, nice classic wah tones, or experimental weirdness, it's good for both. As i mentioned in my cherry pop review, i tried the fuzz and wah together for anesthesia (bass solo using fuzz and wahby original metallica bassist cliff burton, check it out if you've never heard it) and it blew my mind i tried it with my old guitarists phase 90 and giga delay, and almost wet myself, the noise was indescribable. And that for me is also it's uniqueness, the different sounds come from how you use it, it's a just a pedal, with only one tone control. I haven't tried any of the competition, like a morley dual wah, or a digitech synth wah, so i can't compare it to those. It's a classic wah, you have to rock it back or forwards to get a sound, which might put a lot of people off who prefer an auto wah, but i personally like the full control, it takes some time figuring out which movements give good sounds, but if you just rock on the beat you can't wrong. It's pricey, but as i said, as bass players, it's an evil we've become accustomed too. If you want crybaby tone on bass you'be got it. Thanks again, turned out to be waffley and ranty again, oh well. Pics below:

For the past couple of weeks I was GAS'ing for a budget fuzz pedal that was good with both bass and guitar and wasn't a russian muff or an odb-3 (having previously owned both). The russian muff part took some doing but i definetly found it the devi ever Cherry Pop. First some stuff on actually buying it: The only place I could find them in the uk was selling them for £120, so i settled on importing it. With shipping from america it came to just a shade under £85, i ordered it about 1am tuesday (hey what can i say, i'm a student) and it arrived friday, very impressed. The place i ordered it from [url="http://www.proguitarshop.com"]http://www.proguitarshop.com[/url] marked down the stated value on the shipping info so it wouldn't get stopped by customs (which would leave me paying exorbitant taxes and import fees), and while not strictly above board, this is very useful and a lot of places do it now, so if you're thinking of importing anything from america, give them a look. One slight downside though, i had to pay through paypal, and i couldn't pay with bank transfer or my debit card, so i had to borrow my dads credit card, which happened to be an american express, now i don't know if it accepted it because it was a credit card or because it was an american express, so give them an email if you're thinking of ordering anything. It wasn't magnificently packaged though, the pedal was in it's box with just a few inadequate packing peanuts, and that box was in a shipping box with equally inadequate air packing, i'll adress the consequences of this in the reliability section (did somebody say...tension?) Anyway, the pedal, reviewed in harmony central style, partly because it's requested, partly so i can just c+p it for my harmony central review Ease of use: 6 Don't judge it simply by a number, to me it's what every good pedal should be, it takes some getting to know to use well, but what might get some people is it manges to be quite complex with only 3 knobs, volume for gain, tone for ...well, tone, and control changes intensity, but also the characteristics of the fuzz. It takes a bit of fiddling to get decent sounds of it, it's very sensitive to everything, i tried it with a passive and an active and it sounded quite different with both, on the active, the simple 2 band eq made a massive difference to the pedal, significantly moreso than the clean signal. On both, the slightest change in dynamics made a difference, but in a weird way i'll address later. Setting eitheir of the tone or control knobs to hard left or right has an odd effect also. If you turn eitheir to just a slight turn before hard left or right, then turn it to hard left or right, it sounds completely different. I've come To think of it as hard left and right being their own settings, and then everything else being the adjustable setting. It's defintely a pedal you need to know well to use well, it's got it's own personality, but a rewarding one. If you're gigging with it, i'd say you definitley need to know what you're going to use it for, spend a lot of time figuring out good settings in advance, practice, and don't stray from them. The jacks take some hammering in, but at least they're sturdy. Battery access is via the back plate, which removes with fours screws, there's no battery holder, but th small mxr size enclousre means it slots in sungly behind the switch, and there's a 9v boss type jack. Sound Quality: 9 Bring on the fuzz. This thing is chock full of it. I've tried it with my active and passive basses, and my cheapy guitar. The first issue to address is low end response. When i first tried it i had the tone set hard left, as i figured left was bass and right was treble. When i hit the switch and was assualted by a thin weedy screechy open E i almost cried. I tried fiddling with the tone knob, and low and behold, left was treble, right bass. I then turned it hard right and nearly blew out my amp. The Low end response is unreal, as good as every bass specific fuzz i've ever heard. There's a variety of tones for bass, having the tone hard right and control hard left gives you a very bassy tone with simple tame, synthy fuzz, very overdriveish, think the opening riff of Time Is Running Out by Muse. Cranking up the control makes the fuzz more intense, anything past about 2 o'clock though and it gets pretty unusable for low end, so you have to use the control and tone in tandem, they interact quite a bit. This however highlights something else about the pedal, not so much a flaw, as just how it works. The tone knob acts essentially as a filter, not just boosting the treble or bass, but eliminating the opposite frequency. This may not be by design, but it happened with both basses and the guitar, The Effect is only occasionaly noticeable with low frequiences, if you have the control low and the tone hard left you wont notice even on an open low C (I didn't try any lower tunings) if you push the control past 1 o'clock you'll occasionaly notice depending on your amp and eq settings the fuzz is inconsistent and takes a second or two to kick in properly on some notes, but just push the tone up a tiny bit and it's fine. It only gets noticeable with the high frequenices, with the tone past 4 o'clock (the tone only goes up to 5 o'clock) and the control past about 12 o'clock, anything past about 12'th fret on the g string decays almost immeadietly into sputtery oscillation, and anything past about 15'th fret just doesn't sound at all, you just get the sputtery oscillationy decay minus the actual note. To me this is by no means a major issue, with a negligble compromise on the low end (even with the tone hard left, there's still plenty of low end) there's plenty of sounds to treat the whole fret board well. The sustain sings, depending on where the tone and control are, you can get some nice rich oscillations, certainly rivals a muff on sustain, probably even beats it. The pedal itself is no noise, if you mute the strings completely, or turn your bass/guitar volume down, there's barely even a hum, but it is very sensitive, with the tone far left and control high, even a slight rubbing of the strings will cause it to scream. Overall Very Very Good Fuzz, lots of different sounds, simple tame low end fuzz, to high end wall of noise weirdness, i've heard samples of other boutique fuzz's, The supercollider, the ramshead, the wooly mammoth, even the legendary shin ei, and while the cherry pop is probably not comporable to a £300 pedal, the low low price outweighs any small sound difference. Reliability: 9 Small MXR Size enclousre, made of thick, unpainted brushed steel, jacks are rock solid, foot switch is very sturdy, my main concern is probably the pots, they're small plastic, and raised of the pedal, they'd be the first thing to go i'd say, but good for now. The led is right nect to the foot switch, but it's sunken so there's minimal risk of breaking it. If you recall the intro (seems so long ago doesn't it?) i said it made a transatlantic journey very badly packaged, well it survived unscathed, i gave the box a shake when i got it, and it rattled quite a bit, so it was obviously knocked around, and still fine. Having a look at the innards, it's all very minimlaist, no pcb, just the switch, the jacks, the pots, and presumably the fuzz circuit wrapped in tape attacthed to the pots. There's no battery clip but it slots in snugly behind the siwtch (i've never had an mxr pedal so this might be the case with all pedals of this size). These things are handmade by devi ever (she's a person, it's not just the company name) and someone else I believe, and it looks and feels very well designed and very well put together. Definitley boutique quality. Customer Support: N/A (9) I've only had it a week or so, so i've not used it yet, but i've heard nothing but good things, the company is run by the founder devi ever, and a few other people i think, but apparently all the technical problems are handled by devi, and she'll tell how to fix it if you feel confident doing it yourself, and she's very accesible through the website, and the forums, and she's also active on youtube. So N/A because I haven't actually used it, but 9 on repuation (no 10 because nothings perfect) Overall: 9 For £70, you can't do any better, It's not even deisgned for bass, specifically, like all devi pedals it's designed for everything, guitar, bass, vocals, synth, drums. I got it because I also play guitar a little, and i'm very poor, so when i spend what little money i have on gear, I want it to be versatile. Coupled with the only other pedal I own at the moment, a dunlop bass crybaby, I got some awesome sounds perfect for my weird atmospheric post rock band. I also observed the basic bass effects forumal, fuzz + wah + bass + show off player = Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth). Sounded fantastic, I've never had so much fun playing it. But as i said repeatedly it's also capable of simple, groove friendly, bass heavy fuzz, some fuzzed up sabbath sounded fantastic. If you're looking for a specific bass fuzz, they do make a bass fuzz that's probably more up your alley. In fact they only make fuzz pedals, so there's something for everyone and every purpose, I definitley reccomend the pedal, but I whole heartedly reccomend the company. Any company that gives you a free lollilop with a fuzz pedal has got to be worth a look, right? Thanks for reading that very, very, very long review, pics below:

[url="http://www.deviever.com/fx/bitmangler/"]http://www.deviever.com/fx/bitmangler/[/url] awesome stuff, my first devi pedal is winging it's way from america at the mo, check out all her stuff, more types of fuzz than a velco factory. Of death.

Can anyone reccomend someone to repair my old Trace 715 (By old I mean made before they shut down, then started making new stuff)? In both North Yorkshire and Canterbury/london (it's a bit of a long story). There's a distinct lack of north yorkshire reccomendations in the stickied thread Anywhere in york (except rock ola, had a bad repair expeirence before) would be ideal, leeds is fine, but anyhwere further is pushing it (i can't drive yet so i'm having to blag a lift). I've read the stickied reccomendation thread, but does anyone know which would be better for my Trace 715 in the above mentioned north yorkshire area, or north kent, or north london (if i have to do it london it'll be from watford and the guy giving me a lift doesn't like driving into the center of london, understandably) Reading it back, that's very confusing, even to me, but oh well, i'll be happy to clarify anything, Cheers

[quote name='umph' post='264489' date='Aug 18 2008, 12:50 PM']if it still sounds good to you and sits well in your band mix don't worry about it! it's all about what sounds good to you not what someone else tells you sounds good, that is unless you have really bad taste.[/quote] If i'd have discovered devi ever before i found that modded muff, i'd have defintely gone for a devi, i've never heard the modded muff, and i've had a russian muff before, so i want to try something new. Low end response is very important though, one of my life's ambitions is to play the hysteria riff with as much pure mind bending fuzz force as the first time i heard it, and a devi certainly seems to be a step in that direction

after a lot of looking, i've pretty much narrowed it down to eitheir a hyperion or a cherry pop. The hyperion's got a good muff sound, nice fuzz, works great on bass and guitar and seems to treat chords well, but it's a little tame for what i'm looking for, i like having the option for a kinda squealy harmonic out of control feedback high end on guitar and bass. If you don't know what i mean, i had an odb-3 a while ago, and with a certain bass, if i set the high band eq at anything beyond 3 o'clock and played a harmonic, i got an endless loop of a kinda low freq sine wave harmonic with squealy overtones that was the best wall of noise i've ever heard. And the cherry pop seems to offer that, tame chord firendly options for guitar, more intense fuzz for bass and guitar, and raspy high end weirdness. So has any has any direct experience with both the cherry pop and the hyperion? The cherry pop involves extending my budget so i want to be pretty sure. Also kev, i came across this on my exploits: [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lALOz6EZMc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lALOz6EZMc[/url] no indication how it responds to bass though

Firstly, apolgoies for two posts in a row, but this seemed to make more sense as a new thread, secondly apologies for the second very long winded post in a row, i like to rant. Basically I'm in the market for a mid-price fuzz/overdrive that is good for both bass and guitar (I occasionaly get roped into playing six strings at gigs and it would be nice to be able to use a pdeal i'm familiar with) having previously owned one, my instinctual reaction was a russian muff, i found a whizzer-modded one with 9v-jack and true bypass (everything a russian muff owner dreams of), but was informed by your own bassmankev that the mods suck most of the low end out (this has now been confirmed by the guy who did the mods). My next thought was a zvex wooly mammoth, but i almost had a cornoary when i looked into prices, I looked around here and found a few reccomendations of a boutique company i've never heard of, devi ever, finding a few demo vids on youtube i'm blown away by the things these pedals can do, seem to work great on bass and guitar, not to mention the low low prices. My only problem is, that all they seem to make are fuzz pedals, dozens and dozens of them, so i'm a little spoilt for choice, judging on what i've seen, heard and felt (low end response is fantastic) i'm leaning towards a hyperion, These are the one's in my price range (at least from this site): [url="http://www.analoguehaven.com/devieverusa/95dollarpedals/"]http://www.analoguehaven.com/devieverusa/95dollarpedals/[/url] Anyone had any solid experience with any of these> Cheers

is that compared to the regular russian muff or just on its own? I know some people say the regular russian muff has low-end loss, but it never bothered me

I know, i know, you probably get 50 posts a day about the russian muff, but (i hope) mine's slightly original... I had a Russian Muff before and it died a horrible death, I liked it, but it wasn't the fuzz pedal messiah, and i'd started focusing on a jazz band at the time so i never bothered replacing it, but now i've moved back to my post-rock/stoner-rock/sludge doom/ambient/jam band (even we don't know what we sound like) i want to replace it, now of course they've stopped selling the russian muffs, i was forced to scour evilBay, and came across this (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=130246194915&translate=no&ssPageName=LanguageToggle). So my question (finally) is if anyone knows what this souped up russian muff on acid sounds like? My big concern is the guy rambles on and on about the guitar tones you can get out of it, and never once mentions the humble bass, so i was wondering if in his extensive modifications he's lost the bass response? Anyone have any solid experience with this?, because it's the only thing putting me off it, cheers