MartinB

I'd love to be able to play like Nile Rodgers!

But if I was that good, would I be interested in "local pub covers band level" groups? Perhaps not 🤷‍♂️

If you find a backing track with no drums that you like, you could use EQ to get rid of most of the bass - it wouldn't be perfect, but it might do in a pinch

In my experience, a B1Xon can also be used as an emergency stand-in for a drummer who doesn't turn up for rehearsals 😆

I like a plectrum that doesn't shift around in my fingers, and I like the pointy tip of a Jazz III. Unfortunately they only make really thick, rigid Max Grip Jazz IIIs, so my compromise is to get standard Max Grip 1.14s, and sandpaper the tips to a point. The final shape is basically like a TIII.
 

8 hours ago, Paolo85 said:

-GHS it looks to me ball-end to tapered silk is 38 inches which may bee too much for a precision. I heard they could snap. Has anyone tried?

The E looks slightly odd because a small section of the bare string wraps around the post, in addition to the silked part. The A, D, and G look normal. I've never run into any problems.

On 12/09/2022 at 11:31, Franticsmurf said:

My current board has the Digbeth at the end of the signal chain and I use it with one of my bands, as everything goes through FOH. I was trying out a new compressor pedal the other day (first in the chain) and no matter how I adjusted the ratio, there was no discernible difference to my ears. Assuming there was an issue with the pedal, I ended up taking everything else out of the chain and connecting it directly to my bass amp. No problems, plenty of variation. So in the great tradition of fault finding, I started to try combinations of pedals and the compressor. It turns out the when connected to the Digbeth input (active or passive), adjusting the compression ration has no apparent effect on the output (although the volume can be adjusted as I would expect). I tried a second compressor pedal just in case it was something specific to the original, with the same result.  I assume there must be some additional compression at work in the Digbeth pedal but I can't find any further info.

 

Any ideas? Am I missing the obvious? (I have been known to in the past).  

I couldn't reproduce this - increasing the volume going into the Laney increased the volume coming out. Are you feeding it a particularly hot signal? Is your compressor set to unity gain (i.e. roughly the same volume out when switched on or off)? I couldn't test active vs. passive input as it's all wired up on my board.

Ignoring the marketing bs, "elasticStage" might be worth keeping an eye on for when they launch:

Quote

A new service can cut master-quality vinyl faster than ever with runs as low as a single disc

[...]

The firm promise "no lead times and no upfront costs".

https://www.musicradar.com/news/vinyl-lives-and-this-time-its-even-eco-friendly

Another recommendation for the 4-knob Spark Booster here. Clean boost, overdrive, dirty boost, three different EQ profiles, plus high and low controls - and inexpensive too. You're bound to find something that floats your boat.

I also use a camping stool - cheap, lightweight, folds flat. My small cab sits in the canvas bit like a sling. When I use it with my big cab, it rests on top of the metal bars, and the feet on the cab sit just outside them, which keeps it centred. It's obviously quite top-heavy when loaded, and not massively stable along the front-back axis of the seat - I wouldn't use it on unstable ground, or a crowded stage with careless band members. But in the right scenario, it's very handy!

12 hours ago, Quilly said:

(I assume they've sorted this problem now)

Yep - my One10 dates back to early 2019 and has no signs of peeling

27 minutes ago, PaulThePlug said:

No Phaser... 🙁

It does exist, along with an "analog" delay*, fuzz, compressor, flanger, and another distortion - just not on Amazon UK. £16 on ebay
There also are Horse versions of the various Joyo American/British/... Sound pedals; they're smaller AND have the power socket in a better position 👍

* Which is likely a digital-with-modulated-repeats delay

If you like a 160A, you could do a lot worse than a Keeley Bassist (review) - transparent and easy to dial in

And as luck would have it, there's one for sale in the classifieds at the moment (no affiliation)

Yeah, it does say in the description that it was artificially split using software (and the whole channel belongs to a company that provides this service). I'd rather see this made explicit in the video title though, because genuine stems from the original multi-track recording can tell you a lot more than just the notes - e.g. what the tone sounds like out of the mix (often horrible, but it's educational to hear it!)

Here's a quick comparison of the FET channel and the Tube channel with increasing levels of Drive.

There's a click each time the settings change:
First the FET channel
Then the Tube channel @ drive level 0 (min)
Tube channel @ drive level 1
... all the way up to ...
Tube channel @ drive level 10 (max)
 

EQ controls are centred.
Squier PJ bass (P 100%, J ~70%, tone 100%); GHS Pressurewound strings.

23 hours ago, mario_buoninfante said:

nice one.
may I ask how you generated the white noise, what interface you using and what sample rate?
The high freq roll off seems a little bit too much for being the interface itself the limiting factor, considering it starts at ~5K.
also, is what you called "bypassed", white noise going through the pedal with this being OFF?

Hmm... I'm glad you asked, because I think I may have made a mistake 🙈

So the white noise is a 30-second sample generated by Audacity on default settings. I'm using Voxengo SPAN inside Reaper for the frequency analysis.

Playing the raw white noise sample inside Reaper shows a nice flat line:

And playing back that sample, with an output from the interface looped back into one of the inputs, gives a very slight difference:

You can see a bit of roll-off below 50 Hz and above ~10 kHz. The interface is an old Mackie Onyx Blackjack, recording at 24-bit 48kHz.
 

However... this isn't the method I was using to send the white noise to the pre-amp pedal. Instead I was using an Akai MPX8 sample player connected to the Laney, so it seems like maybe it's been limited by the frequency range that can produce, rather than what the interface can record. The "Red: direct signal into audio interface" in the very first graph I posted is actually the MPX8 directly into the interface, which backs up this theory.

What I can do is repeat the tests using the loopback from output --> input instead, and then update the OP with new images. It's slightly fiddlier, which is why I used the Akai instead, but it shouldn't take long.

UPDATE: I've re-done it properly and updated all the graphs in the original post, so it's much more accurate now 😅

Hi folks! I've had my eye on the Laney Digbeth pre-amp pedal for a while, and having recently joined a new band I had a good excuse to try one out.
 

I've seen a decent amount of positive reactions to this pedal here and there, so I'm just going to cover some of the info that I wasn't able to find out about before buying. If you want to check out photos and the basic specs, head on over to https://www.laney.co.uk/amps/bass/digbeth/db-pre

Before I start on the graphs, I'm aware that firing white noise into a pedal isn't the most accurate form of measurement, and obviously we don't listen with our eyes, but I'm happy that it provides some value by demystifying what some of the controls actually do.

First off, here's as "flat" as my audio interface will record - no pedal involved at all:
Frequency along the bottom; relative dB up the side


There's a little roll-off below ~50 Hz and above ~8 kHz, so bear that in mind when looking at the rest of the graphs.

Time to plug the pedal in. Before we touch any of the dials, does this pedal have a baked-in tone? Well, the manual says that the EQ controls (bass, lo-mid, hi-mid, treble, tilt) don't have any effect at their detented centre settings, so let's see what happens when you toggle the "bypass" footswitch.

Green: FET (clean) channel, all controls at 5-out-of-10 / 12 o'clock / centre position
Red: Pedal in "bypass" mode


Pretty flat! Bypassed it pretty much looks the same as having no pedal at all. I've read elsewhere that this pedal is buffered rather than true bypass.
Switching on the FET channel with everything at noon, it's slightly above unity gain (i.e. a little louder). There looks to be a very mild bump in the mids, and a little roll-off in the low lows.

A good starting point to start turning things and seeing what happens...

First, the Bass control:

Red: minimum
Green: maximum

Is that a shelf, or just a peak at a low enough frequency that it runs into the limits of what the interface will capture? Either way, you can get around 10 dB boost or cut at about 50 Hz.

On to the Lo-mid. This one's got three possible settings, and the manual lists them in the wrong order. With the switch in the upper position, you get this:

The manual says:

Quote

A narrow lower mid cut which is great for giving more definition to your bass when playing with a drummer. Pull it back to give space to the kick & snare, bring it up to push your bass in front of the drums

The graph says: 12 dB boost or 8 dB cut at 180 Hz.

With the switch in the middle position:

From the manual:

Quote

A wider mid-range control is great for bringing out the growl of you bass, very useful to give more bite to your distorted tones, or for cutting back and increasing mid-range clarity

Yep, that's definitely wider than the previous setting! About 15 dB boost or 14 dB cut at 480 Hz.

Finally, the switch in the lower position:

Quote

An upper mid setting, great to honing in on the pop of a bass or to cut back on fret noise.

A narrower 15 dB boost or 14 dB cut again, this time at 700 Hz.


Now the Hi-mid:

Looks like 15 dB boost or cut at 1.5 kHz. I'd say this is closer to the "pop / fret noise" zone than the 700 Hz lo-mid setting 🤷‍♂️


And the Treble:

Interesting 🤔
The curve's a little different when boosting vs. cutting. Overall it looks like it peaks around 8 kHz, but with a shallow slope right down to the mids.


Last but not least, the Tilt control:
Red: minimum (most bassy)
Green: maximum (most trebly)


As most reviews have pointed out, a little goes a long way with this control! 😂
The pivot point is around 830 Hz. I think the idea is to use this to make slight adjustments to the overall sound for live usage, e.g. giving it a nudge to the treble side if you're on a hollow, boomy stage. But it interacts in interesting ways with the rest of the controls, especially with Bass and Treble adjusted in the "opposite" directions to the tilt. For example, you can approximate a 60s cab where there's a bump in the low-mids, but output rolls off a lot below that.

Overall, this pedal has a very versatile set of controls. The EQ points are all in sensible places, and the mid controls are focused enough that you can hear what they're adding or removing, rather than just a big old blob of MIDS. I've used it for a few rehearsals with random studio amps, but not live yet. Currently my starting settings are: Lo-mids 7 (with the switch upwards), Hi-mids 7, and Treble 6 - everything else flat. That's giving me some punch in the lows, and some presence and pick attack further up.

Other things:

• The face of the pedal is covered by a ~1mm thick glossy plastic plate with all the control labels on it. This feels like it might be prone to cracking, given that the point of a pedal is to be stepped on. But I could be totally wrong - it's backed by a flat metal surface after all! Time will tell
• The Digbeth logo is an additional moulded bit of plastic that sits on top of that. I think it looks cool; you may think it's tacky! As a Birmingham resident, I'll admit that the name did sway me a bit towards trying this pedal out 😁
• It's a bit taller than your average pedal (i.e. the distance from the floor to the top of the footswitches is greater) - could be awkward if mounted on a thick pedalboard
• It comes with rubber feet attached, but they peel off cleanly

What about the Tube channel? Well, it doesn't involve any actual tubes. But it does sound pretty good! There seems to be some additional low-pass filtering compared to the FET channel, and some mild EQ pre-shaping even with all controls flat:
Red: FET
Green: Tube (at minimum Drive)

I failed to set these to approximately equal volume, but you should be able to see the difference in the EQ. The filtering of extreme highs means that it doesn't get too fizzy when the gain is turned up - it almost acts like a cab simulation. This means the DI signal doesn't sound atrocious with dirt! 😅
I don't have a lot more to say about the Tube channel, as I've not used it much yet. I might record some clips in the future.

Well that's your lot. I hope some of it was helpful! 😁

tl;dr Pedal is good!

Emulation, but it sounds pretty good. There seems to be a low-pass filter on the tube channel, which means the DI signal doesn't get all fizzy when you turn up the gain

Very happy with my Keeley Bassist - it's pretty much idiot-proof.
Worth noting that the Keeley GC-2 is almost identical to the Bassist, and the MXR M76 Studio Compressor is identical to the M87 - sometimes you can find these a bit cheaper

Not currently, but I was in two bands for a year or more without having any real problems - one of them preferred to rehearse on weeknights, the other at the weekend. And neither was gigging frequently enough (or at short enough notice) for there to be any clashes. Not having dependents helps with the whole "having free time" thing.

The stuff that's fun to listen to isn't always fun to play, and vice versa. Somewhere in the middle is the sweet spot.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks

3 hours ago, Rich said:

it's got to better my Shuttle 9.2.

Those things are quite the GAS-preventers. For pretty much any new amp that catches my eye, I can say "Yeah, but it's not as {x} as my Shuttle".
Sadly it's no defence against buying pedals 😆

Have a look at gig listings for the sort of venues you want to play - usually you'll be able to see who the promoter is. And if not, it's possible the venue does it in-house, so get in touch with them directly. These days I think it helps a lot if you've been able to build a decent social media following (🤢) - it theoretically gives some indication of whether folks will turn up without the promoter having to do any actual promotion. Good promoters will see your potential regardless, but they're rare. Also if there are other local bands that are any good, reach out - promote their releases, ask for advice, generally be nice. If they have any influence on their promoters, they'll put in a good word. Good luck!

Note that since the controls on the Shuttle have detents (notches), there can be quite a volume jump between each setting if you're trying to keep things quiet - particularly on Master Volume. You'll probably find you need to set Master Volume as low as it can go while still producing sound, and then use the pre-amp controls for more fine control.

Bloody Squier!
The bridge pickup route on mine isn't even straight - the pickup is closer to the neck on the G side than the E side. This doesn't stop it being a great-looking, -playing and -sounding bass however!