Baloney Balderdash

I though that was Beethoven. La La La Song (by Low)

Heart of Steel (Manowar)

Somthing that might be easy to overlook but sounds absolutely awesome and lush for bass judging from the few YouTube demos I could find covering it is the analog BBD chip based Ibanez Mini Chorus. For a bit more subtle kind of chorus I love the TC Electronic 3rd Dimension Chorus, which is based on the Boss DC-2.

Only You (The Platters, though Elvis is more famously associated with this song)

I guess this is not a thing that you can debate much really, as people will have different personal taste and preferences, but this post is in no way intended to stir up controversies either though, really just giving voice to my personal opinion and thoughts on this matter, as well as it hopefully will work as a way for me to toe the water for how common my take on applying distortion to a bass is, and if the fizzy thin distortion layer school is really as widespread and common among bass players as it appears to be to me, and finally perhaps it also might possibly open the eyes for some people to the fact that there are other ways to make bass distortion work than strictly limiting it to the upmost higher frequencies of your signal. I also realize that the way I describe the trend with only distorting the top end of your signal might seem like a provocation, but as said it is honestly not meant to be so, it just happens to honestly represent how it sounds to me, not telling anyone not to do it as they personally happens to prefer and like it, mainly just hope to get some replies from people who share my take on this matter to get an idea of how common it might or might not be. But I just don't get the modern trend with adding a thin fizzy distortion laying on top of your clean tone for your high gain distortion bass tone, I realize that not everything you play will work well with full on distorted bottom end, but there are other ways to prevent your bass ending up sounding like a muddy, undefined, blurry mess, without limiting your distortion to the upmost frequencies of the signal, like for instance as Lou Barlow from Dinosaur Jr. does, using a bass heavy overdriven SVT, mainly, but not exclusively, emphasizing the distortion of the bottom end of his bass signal, then a clean solid state Peavey amp, mainly, but not exclusively, emphasizing the mid range cleans, and finally an overdriven Marshall JCM800, mainly, but again not exclusively, emphasizing the distortion of his top end, and he has a massive sounding overdrive/distortion tone with plenty of supporting bottom end and no issues with cutting through the mix. I guess one of the secrets to get a relatively clearly defined bass signal when using full range distortion on your bass signal, rather than only distorting the top end, would also be to apply less gain than you might think is required, a relatively low gain distortion applied to the full signal, to my ears, will end up sounding considerably more heavy than a high gain distortion applied exclusively to the upper most top end of your signal, and in my experience, at least if applied, voiced and EQ'ed right and having the right amount of clean mix, will sound just as well defined.

Might work this way actually, depending on the specific bass cab and which speaker(s) is/are in it, though I would properly throw in a HPF set at around 40Hz or so on the bass signal, iedeally placed somewhere towards the end of your signal chain, after eventual effect pedals, to decrease the risk of damaging the speaker(s) by using it/them as a woofer.

So as the tittle says, which effect pedals related gear do you currently anticipate arriving with the mail service or plan to acquire in the nearest future (like in the time frame of the next couple of months) ? For me these are going to be my near future effect pedals related gear acquisitions : Later this month (October 2020) : - TC Electronic SpectraComp ( For the first in my signal chain, right after the bass, fairly subtle compression, for a slightly tighter and slightly more punchy signal to my other pedals (currently using one of the compressor models on my Zoom G1Xon) ) - Zoom B1X Four ( For my last in the chain (beside my 3 pedals/units "tone section", consisting of light compression/tube preamp stage -> equalization -> preamp stage, residing on top of my poweramp), reverb effects, placed right after my near future pedal board (which ends with a pedal that emulates a Roland Space Echo tape delay unit), planing to make 3 different reverb patches that I will stick to using, respectively being: a subtle plate reverb patch, a lush reverb patch, likely to be build up by following reverb models: (Early Reflections (not sure about this one)) -> Plate reverb -> HD Hall reverb, and finally a really thick reverb pad patch used with volume swells, likely going to consist of the same reverb models as the lush reverb patch, just even more prominent (as in higher in the mix and with increased decay time), and likely combined with a delay model of some sort placed in between the plate and the hall reverb ) - Harley Benton SpaceShip 40 ( My first real pedal board ever, for easing transport and general mobility of my effect pedals setup, now that I am finally rehearsing with other people again. Dimesions: 70-85 x 450 x 305 mm ) - 3 x Harley Benton Solder-Free Patch Cable KIT ( Solder free patch cable kit with angled, extremely flat plugs, for a tight fitting on the pedal board ) Next Month (November 2020) : - Fender Blender fuzz clone from "Made by Mike" [ : http://madebymike.co.uk/ ] ( Well, placing the order there at least, then it will be an additional 4-6 weeks before I can expect it to actually arrive Not sure how I'll fit it into my setup honestly, but have been wanting a Fender Blender fuzz for a long time by now, ever since I first tried one myself and fell in love with it's harsh, abrasive, somewhat out of control, wild and insane octave fuzz tone )

For a cheap solution (61£/69 Euro) that judging from the few YouTube demos I have watched sounds great, though I have no personal experience with it, there is the Eden Module Terra Nova bass preamp: https://www.thomann.de/gb/eden_module_terra_nova.htm To name just one feature that seems great about this is that it got both a low mids and high mids EQ control, which both additionally got a sweepable center frequency control. Big as hell though, and even though I think it looks pretty cool, I'd imagine the look might not be in everyone's taste, if that is something that matters to you. But otherwise to me it seems to me like a regular steal for the money. Here's the 2 of the just 3 YouTube demos I was able to find featuring this pedal : (Excuse my Japanese )

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What prevents you from daisy chaining the pedals? Buy one cheap power supply with as high rated amperes (A or mA probably, 1000mA or 1A should be fine for running 10 pedals) as possible and then 2 of the daisy chain cords from my second link. Go to Thomann's website as I linked to, I am sure they got an adapter that makes it possible to use the power supply I suggested, or that they got a cheap one with the plug you need, just find the "Power supplies" category and then chose "Price: low to high" from the drop down menu.

This: https://www.thomann.de/gb/harley_benton_powerplant_adapter_pack_1pro.htm + This: https://www.thomann.de/gb/palmer_mi_pwc_6.htm Will do it, and then you will even have plugs to feed 3 more pedals with power. This power supply should be powerful enough to quite easily handle 10 pedals (or 20 for that matter, at least as long as they are analog, as digital pedals typically will require considerably more power to run properly, still this power supply should be able to handle 10 of those easily), and from my experience daisy chaining very rarely cause issues, and if it does it is usually just 1 pedal being the issue, solved by giving that pedal it's own dedicated power supply, while leaving the rest daisy chained.

Well, as it happens to be I swapped to now mainly using Thomann's The Box PA 502 passive 8 Ohm, 300W (96dB SPL @1W1M sensitivity), full range PA speaker with a 15" woofer and a 44mm (1.73") titanium tweeter horn (I think the crossover is somewhere around 2.3 or 2.5 kHz) for the project described in my previous post, quoted above. The reason is that the low G (for you that would be the low E) string on my bass snapped (due to me being stupid and accidentally over tuning) from the D'Addario NYXL set described in my previous post, and when I went back to the regular XL strings I used previously I discovered that the less clear, less clean and less sort of pristine/hi-fi tone of the regular XL strings, in comparison to the NYXL ones, were better suited for this project, and with that change I discovered that the PA speaker mentioned above with these strings actually also was better suited than the SWR cab of my initial post (was exact the opposite case with the NYXL strings). I'd still claim that objectively the D'Addario NYXL strings and the SWR Triad I cab sounds better, or at least more hi-fi, but as I discovered, in the context of how I use it currently, a less clean, less hi-fi, solution was the right thing. So I guess the SWR Triad I cab probably remains my favorite bass cab, though I would definitely recommend the PA speaker (The Box PA 502, that can be bought at Thomann: https://www.thomann.de/gb/the_box_pa502_fullrangesystem.htm) in question to anyone looking for a great budget full frequency cab solution, really nice tonal balance and a remarkable low end representation for a non sub woofer PA speaker, in it's price class it's amazingly and surprisingly great. Here's the manual to the The Box PA 502: https://images.static-thomann.de/pics/atg/atgdata/document/manual/c_160814_r2_en_online.pdf

Well, the clips of the real 8 string bass in the OP of that thread does sound quite synthy compared to the ones I've heard, but yeah you nail that sound pretty closely with the Mosaic. I am going for something sounding more like this though : And I think I am able to approximate that pretty closely with my Sub'N'Up. I'll record some clips when I get myself pulled together to do so, might take a few days though before I get it done. Actually my "fake 8 string bass" setup sounds really close, almost spot on, to the short bit with the demonstration of both pickups in humbucker mode here on the Haghström 8 string (starts at around the 00:25 time mark), but with the octave slightly more subdued, as in lower in the mix volume wise (though I can turn it up in a section of the recordings I make so you can hear it sounding pretty much like the snip of this video referred to), not actually really intentionally aiming to replicate the 8 string bass sound spot on, but using the same principle/concept to get a similar functionality, though while still aiming for it to sound as natural as possible (you should properly also know that I got my bass tuned to G standard, as in 3 half steps above regular 4 string bass E standard tuning, or 2 half steps bellow A standard baritone guitar tuning, though I guess that doesn't really change the fact that the tone I got dialed in sounds very similar to the snip of this video I referred to) :

Doesn't fit my personal playing style, but I love how the bass sounds on this track, and well, the track as such as well, the music video too for that matter : And then to something completely different, that fits close to my personal playing style preferences, that almost have become a cliche with how many times the hook bass riff was repeated perpetually in countless bass demos, love the tone though and love both the track and the band, again also an amazing music video : This too :

I bet Mc Gyver could build you one out of a broken tennis bat, the wire and magnets from the burned out motor of a propeller hat and a piece of discarded barbwire.

Kind of my point with writing: As for the rest I guess that is fair enough, to each their own.

Truly strange that two people can perceive something that ought to be relatively objective so differently. Totally diametrally opposite to my experience with those two units. I wonder if the Ricochet I got was somewhat faulty, though that still wouldn't explain why to me the default polyphonic octave up effect of the Sub'N'Up is about as natural sounding as pitching up your signal a whole octave without EQ'ing gets, and that with some very specific EQ'ing, via the Toneprint editor, you can get extremely close to a realistic real 8 string bass effect. Especially the attack, which is what goes wrong with most octave up effects, to me seems quite natural on the Sub'N'Up. I can't believe you don't hear those odd digital artifacts that I would think you would get, with the Richochet too, from the most upper frequencies of your signal being pitched up as well. Also the tracking is absolutely perfect using my bass and my Sub'N'Up Mini, so have no idea how the Richochet could possibly do that better, my unit certainly didn't, in fact quite on the contrary. We almost ought to do a recording each and post a thread together with a poll to get this settled, cause I have a hard time wrapping my head around this mystery.

The Zoom MS-70 CDR happens to be stereo (both stereo inputs and outputs), though you can't EQ differently for the right and left channel, if that is what you were looking for.

Well the Zoom MS-70 CDR, stompbox sized digital multi effect, got both a bass specific and a guitar specific fully parametric equalizer that you can stack up to 6 of in a patch. I say fully parametric equalizer but there are some jumps in the frequency bands you can chose from (but they are actually relatively close), as well as you can only chose between respectively a 0.5 - 1 - 2 - 4 - 8 or 16 Q value, the available frequencies lying between 20Hz to 20kHz, and differing a bit between the guitar specific and bass specific model, as far as I know being the only difference between the two equalizer models, finally you got a -/+ 20dB cut or boost at your disposal. No HPF or LPF, but if you know what you are doing you can fake that by applying 3 to 4 bands of parametric EQ'ing, typically having to use 2 bands of cutting with relatively low Q value, and then sculpting the slope where the cutoff starts by also boosting 1 or 2 frequency bands slightly (the right DAW VST parametric equalizer with a graphic representation of the parameters should be able to help you with getting a better idea about what you are actually doing). Works well for me, I personally use 4 of the 2 band bass specific parametric equalizers chained up in a patch for EQ'ing my basic tone, followed by 2 additional 2 band equalizers for a LPF. Even with the few limitations (fixed frequencies and Q values to chose from), you can really get surgically specific with this, which I found very liberating. I would think the general quality of the effects modeling on this cheap Zoom multi effect will not really be an issue here, since it is just equalization, and since the actual AD converter and processing resolution and bit depth of the unit is fine.

You might be right, I think it is actually a quite alluring thought and plausible that Digitech did something additionally to the circuit of the Mosaic, like for instance somehow EQ'ing the input signal to the octave engine and the output of the pitched up signal, to sound more naturally and realistically as real struck guitar/bass strings, since it is specifically marketed as emulating a 12 string guitar, unlike the Ricochet, which is supposed to essentially function as a classic but expression-pedal-less Whammy pedal. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to really explain our different experiences, except for perhaps the general fact that everybopdy's senses and perception of what they pick up doesn't work exactly the same.

I actually know of this version, and while this cover actually being a fine song on it's own, I don't think it's actually a very good cover, the original, in my opinion being far superior in any way, and as far as I am concerned the trip-hop twist not really working successfully to add anything interesting, but on the contrary only obscure some of the best qualities of the original to some degree. Kind of for some of the same reasons that I think Johnny Cash's cover version of U2's "One" is a much greater song than the original.

It didn't to me. I actually originally bought the Digitech Ricochet to do this job, but I didn't like how it sounded, though the biggest issue with it to me, which was actually determining for why I ended up returning the Ricochet and getting the Sub'N'Up Mini instead (in return also discovering that the stock 1 octave up sounding better and more naturally, and how EQ'ing helped getting it to sound even more realistic), was the tracking being considerably worse compared to the Sub'n'Up's, in my experience, effectively completely flawless tracking, as well as the latency of the Ricochet being quite noticeable (the Sub'N'Up got this same problem with it's octave down effect, but since I don't use that it's not an actual issue for me, and the octave up effect that I actually use having basically unnoticeable latency). In my experience there is no way around EQ'ing either the input or output of a signal digitally pitched up 1 whole octave, and ideally both, if you want it to sound as realistic as possible and get rid of the odd and quite obvious digital artifacts that this kind of processing seemingly inevitably will result in, which the Sub'N'Up offers an easy solution to, without need of complicating your routing and need of extra added pedals. Your experience obvious tells you differently, though I don't quite understand how it possibly can. You apparently not actually having tried the Sub'N'Up using the right settings in the Toneprint editor could possibly partially explain why though.

For me it would be a - bass to guitar emulator - version of something like the EHX BASS9 - guitar to bass emulator - pedal. Here's a demo of the EHX BASS9, in case you are not familiar with it : Currently I use a TC Electronic Sub'N'Up Mini as an always on effect, to emulate that 8 string "octave" bass or fake unison (just an octave higher of course) guitar like effect, and while I can get pretty close with the default polyphic octaver setting and some quite specific EQ'ing, via the Toneprint editor, of the dry input signal that is fed to the octave engine, as well as the octave up output signal, something that deliberately seeks to emulate a realistic guitar or 8 string bass effect for bass would be great, and I would definitely buy such a pedal if it came available on the market.