itu

Oh dear, this certainly is among harder tasks! Please study the ADSR in greater detail. Usually the A (attack) has a lot to do with the sound recognition. If you can tackle the attack, the rest is more or less details. If you are after real saxophone sound, a sax or a synth may be your other option.

Well, it really is smaller than the Shift-Line, but lacks connectors, and an external rotary encoder. Might be possible to build it inside some other effect, though. Consumes 110 mA @ 9 V which is quite a lot.

Keep out from their space and fill yours. Especially keys may get very close to you, at least by accident. It may be somewhat tight, there in between drs and keys.

I think I had an idea of what had happened to the pricing... My choices were: Spruce effects - Old growth fuzz for the hi-Z board and Amptweaker - Bass tight fuzz for the lo-Z.

Well, this sounds like a well thought plan and execution. A photo might be a nice addition. Long soldering times (excess heat) may ruin the pots, but other than that and grouding there should not be any major problematic places. bartolini even provides reasonably legible schemas.

Nice price drop from £465 to £160, by the way. But I would give the unit another try. Taylor's creations take some time to tame their capabilities: I have Nimbus (easy to set up), Divaricator (set-and-forget), Franta (your ways are very strange), and Xero DL (somewhat kinky to set up, because of the very wide sound selection). Only Oxide has left the building, as I got another fuzz that suited my playing a bit better.

Have a weekend bump on... Wednesday! GLWTS x 1884 and counting...

Check if the battery contact is soldered the right way (grounds are connected after the plug is put in). Is there any DC going to the amp input? Should not. Clicks and pops may be a hint of faulty grounding. Is the bridge wire and all other grounds connected well (sort of electrically "tight") together? Check with a DMM. Everything (like any string to the output ground) should be less than 1 ohm.

Probably the most common "music wire" is ASTM A228. This is the name of the core. It is cold drawn, has around 1 % of carbon (C) and around 0.5 % of manganese (Mn). The rest is iron (Fe). This is used in pianos as well as in violins and everything in between. The winding may be bronze, nylon, steel... The steel widing can be nickel coated, hence the name nickel. Remember, that most stainless steels have some nickel in them, as it helps the steel to fight against corrosion. There are many different material compositions of the winding. These additives (like cobalt or nickel) may also affect the electrical properties of the string. Here I mean, that the co-operation with the magnets of the pickups can be tuned somewhat to produce so called "hotter" output. Difference may be subtle. If the string has a "man-made" coating (like Elixir or similar), it only affects the feel and fights against dirt. It has no effect on string's electrical (or rather: magnetic) properties.

Vigier, Kubicki, Overwater, tune, Parker, Peavey, Status, De Gier, Schack... Every builder today is interesting after +50 years. Or if some player "finds" certain brand, the prices will rise. Remember Nirvana and the sky-high prices of those lousy Fenders? But, this is hard to digest: the instrument is not the one that produces that sound. It is the player. Sorry, secret revealed. If I wanted to sound like Geddy Lee, I should learn his playing style. The work in finding a similar instrument just does not help, but only consumes time - while I should play and learn.

Nickel works with fretless.

"Power Requirements: Idle 450mA @9V. Max 750mA @9V (with headphones at max output level)" Pretty hefty power consumption: 6.75 W! One PSU goes to this unit only.

This has been said earlier, but active is pretty bad word describing low impedance (lo-Z). Lo-Z has nothing to do with signal level. It can be lower than with a hi-Z ("passive") bass. It is possible that the bass preamp has lots of extra gain. On the other hand, its signal level may be less than its hi-Z counterpart. Pedals, at least when turned on, are lo-Z by nature. Those "true bypass" ones just have a simple switch, that bypasses the pedal. Then the output is the same as the bass or the previous box has. If the lo-Z bass has B&T adjustments and they are turned to south-east, it may be so, that the signal level is very high (like +15 dB/band). If distortion exists, your choice is to lower the input level or use that other input with pad. I would not lower the volume of the bass, as the higher signal level is often very usable when taming possible noise issues. Higher level is - usually - better for signal processing (pedals), too.

My list only has few of the most common. Lots of different brands and units: https://www.effekt-boutique.de/ Easy ones: chorus, flanger, looper. Turn the unit on and tweak the knobs, that's it. Nearly any brand is reasonably good. Somewhat complicated: octaver, compressor. You need to concentrate on your playing or need to understand the effect adjustments. There are a few good, and few really good ones. Really need time: fuzz/OD/distortion. This is so personal. Widest selection, widest selection of tastes...

You may think, that those mAs are like wattage of your amp. You need to have some extra wattage as a headroom (amperes) to drive the speaker (pedals). Only thing that is different, is that the pedals limit the current intake by themselves so you don't have to adjust anything. If your pedals need more power that your PSU can offer, something will behave in a strange way. Even a PSU failure is an option. A bit more amperes than needed is always better. If some pedal has strange power needs (different voltage, polarity...), you may have to invest in a power brick with isolated outputs. Sometimes a simple power will work fine, sometimes you may have issues with noises and such, and a more sophisticated PSU is needed.