SumOne

I wasn't over-excited about a digital compressor being put into a generic SA one control housing for £275 (that's the Bax price anyway. Edit: Juno are doing them for £200), .... But then read that you can use it as both start and end of chain compression: bass> input 1 > compress> output 1 > rest of pedal chain > input 2 > compress (or limit) > output 2 > amp. .....That is impressive! I'm not sure if it's impressive enough to sell my Cali 76 to then buy an Atlas but I'll consider it.

Matumbi started as a backing band for Jamaican vocalists visiting the UK. I take them as inspiration for why there's no shame in playing reggae instrumental covers ('riddims', in the same way as jazz musicians playing jazz standards for different vocalists).

There's one for sale in the classifieds for £220 which seems about the going rate. If you don't like it you could probably sell it for a similar price.

I found the SA Gemini and Aftershock are well suited to the One Control housing: 6 presets of modulation or distortion is enough so after a Laptop session getting the right ones saved I rarely felt the need to re-connect. The hardware controls are also intuative for the effects parameters and are the main one's you'd want to adjust. I didn't find the housing worked so well for the C4 though. Input/sensitivity don't really need adjusting once set to your Bass so that's a bit of a waste of a control. And Control 1/Control 2 can control completely different parameters on different presets so it's difficult to change something playing live and be sure what it's going to actually change. The Aftershock is fine live to adjust drive/tone/clean/level that's most of what you'd want and is obvious what controls what, C4 is different story if your synth is sounding like it has too much low-end resonance or the envelope filter frequency needs changing - perhaps you happen to have set those parameters to control 1&2 and you remember how they are assigned, that wasn't usually the case for me though. Also, as it's so good at doing different synth, envelope filters, and octavers 6x presets is frustrating (especially when you know the pedal actually stores 128 and just needs some simple way top scroll through them). I know I've posted this a couple of times before but:

Nice. I'm tempted with the Ibanez mini Chorus, Tube Screamer, Phaser. I have three other mini pedals and like the idea of a multi-coloured board full of them.

Sid bought a pedal from me and it was all smooth sailing. Thanks!

I'd say it is worthwhile but you might want to spend some time getting used to it before playing out with it as they can be set badly and make things sound worse. Also, different compressors can sound suprisingly different so it might be worth nerding out at www.onvilab.com and deciding if you want one to be transparent, tone enhancer, limiter, adding sustain, etc. and if you want metering, simple vs complex, digital vs analogue, optical vs tube vs VCA vs FET, side-chain, multiband etc. Ones I've owned that I'd recommend: Cali 76 Bass, FEA Opti-FET, EQD the Warden, Markbass Compressore. And a couple I've owned that I wouldn't recommend so much: Pigtronix Philosopher Bass, MXR M87 (it's very likely these didn't sound that great for me as I didn't know what I was doing with them and set them badly).

^ Yeah, the Mooer, Joyo, Donner, comparisons put me off the Ibanez a bit. Donner chorus (£25), Landlord FX (£30), Stagg Blaxx chorus (£50), Mooer chorus (£50), and Ibanez chorus (£70) all look suspiciously similar (although the Ibanez layout and enclosure is slightly different to those others). I'd like to see a reviewer establish if they are basically the same thing.

NPD: Vein-Tap 'Dark Arts' Tap Tempo Phaser Thought I'd post this as it's a bit of an unusual one I haven't seen mentioned before. First impressions are it's got a lot going on, especially considering lots of phasers are just a single dial. It's got a good paint job, decent dials and footswiches, feels solid (in compact enclosure), and has an extra input in-case you want to use an external tap tempo. I thought it was broken to begin with before realising Red = on, Green = off?! (perhaps that's just a wiring mistake though). And it looks different to the ones on the Vein-Tap website but that's becase they are still the v1 details and this is v2. https://www.vein-tap.com/product/dark-arts-tap-tempo-phaser/ Basically it's a phaser (or can swicth to vibrato, or they can be mixed) with depth, rate & feedback controls....that's failry standard stuff, but then it also has tap tempo, tempo multiplier (so you don't have to tap really fast), 'centre shift' (moves the centre of the wave shape), and 16x phase wave shapes that make all sorts of unusual sounds (or can stick with more traditional ones). At £130 it isn't cheap for a phaser, but is cheap for a tap tempo one (things like the Chass Bliss Wombtone cost >£400), add to that it's unique wave shape options and that it's UK hand-bulit with a lifetime guarentee and it seems a fair price. Early days but I'd say for those that like phaser/vibrato and mucking about with hardware to find unusual sounds then it seems like a winner. If I'm honest I imagine I'll muck about with it a lot for a few weeks before settling into a fairly standard setting and then my GAS will get me wondering if a Phase 90 might be a slightly cheaper and more foolproof option!...but I don't know though, they aren't much cheaper, are mass produced with limited warrenty and have far fewer features - and who knows when you'll need a vibrato left of centre quad ramp waveform at 180bpm that you can then slow to 60bpm via tempo footswitch?!? :

Cheers, it's an Ibanez EHB 1005 MS which ist 35" - 33". It works well, I'd definitely recommend it.

Er.... yes! If you pluck vertically down (red line) then the G is being plucked relatively closer to it's bridge than the B. You'd need to pluck on the blue line to be plucking the same relative distances along each string (The fret fanning and pickup angles show the relative distance for each string e.g. Bridge to 24th fret being a quarter of the length along each string).

I don't think they are there yet. I've tried the OC-5, Sub n Up, MXR BOD, Aguilar Octamizer, Source Audio C4, and the ones in Zoom and Helix and none accurately reproduce the sound of the lower B string notes when you play an octave higher. It's always more like an artificial/synthy 'octaver' tone.

I'm the opposite, even on a normal scale Bass I prefer to pluck the higher strings slightly closer to the neck than the lower strings to make the tone as even sounding as possible. So on multi-scale that becomes more of an issue needing to conciously move my plucking hand a fair bit up the neck for the higher strings (it's not a deal breaker though, I currently own an Ibanez EHB MS and also owned a Dingwall Combustion and an Ibanez SRMS 8005). I mostly play Dub/Reggae type stuff though so always want an consistent fat low-end tone, probably if I played different genres or used more effects and drive then it wouldn't necessarily be an issue at all.

I like multiscale's, I've owned three. One issue I have that I rarely see mentioned is if you pluck just in front of the pickup on the B and then pluck vertically down all the strings you'd be plucking the G relatively closer to the bridge. So you need to adjust plucking position to compensate and have even tone - I don't find that ergonomic or intuitive.

I'd add Fishman Platinum Pro (no drive but has compressor, Tuner, DI, 5 band EQ with HPF and sweepable mids). Or Laney Digbeth which has drive, DI, 4 band EQ, Aux in/phones out and is reasonably priced. Or NUX MLD is great value if you can get the software working.

Sold Jin a pedal and all was good, cheers!

Long weekend, Sunshine, BBQ and this: ☀️

Flabba Holt Explains How He Produced The Classic Gregory Isaacs Album 'Night Nurse' Pt.1 Part 2 Flabba Holt Shows Us How He Created The Bass Lines For Some Of Reggae’s Most Popular Songs Pt.3

Looks good. Seems like it has similar features to the Vein Tap Dark Arts Phaser I've just ordered (although obviously that's phaser rather than chorus) https://www.vein-tap.com/product/dark-arts-tap-tempo-phaser/

So to disable the cab sim from xlr needs the whole pedal turned off and there is no way to add the cab sim to the 1/4" out? I think that's an issue for me. Most preamps have some control over pre/post out for outputs, the Nux MLD is a third of the cost has individual cab sim on/off for XLR and 1/4". I've also found that it's difficult to get a clean dubby tone that uses just the EQ i.e. If I want to boost the bass and cut highs but not have noticeable overdrive the gain has to be very low (as EQ is pre drive so the boosted bass gets overdriven, and blend only blends the un-affected non-bass boosted clean input). It's clearly a very solid (weights nearly 1kg!) well made high end pedal and does some great overdrive tones, I'll give it a while longer to test properly but I'm thinking it's not the pedal for me.

Now I realise that the DI/XLR is always with the Cab sim on, and the 1/4" out is never with the Cab sim on......I'm not sure that's a good move. There might be situations where I want to go via XLR without a Cab sim, and there are definitely situations where I want the 1/4" out to have the option of Cab sim (I've got a fairly 'clean' sounding amp and Cab).