SumOne

I find it interesting that music often gets more criticism for being offensive or inciting bad things than other forms of art while actually being much tamer. Films, porn, books, computer games are all more explicit in their content. I guess it says something about the power of music.

Before & After shots. Selling a few pedals basically paid for the Helix and C4 (+ controllers). My conclusion is that this new setup is fun and has a lot more potential sounds and tweakability, but it does lose a few things - the individual pedals are more limited but often sound a bit better at their specific sound and have more obvious/immediate hands-on (or foot-on) control. The new setup is better suited to hooking up to a laptop and planning out presets rather an spontaneous tweaking. Also, the Helix editing system is great and a £20 footswitch will give you two extra footswitches which is plenty to do most things. The C4 sounds great but Neuro editing isn't as intuative, and it needs a £100+ controller to access additional presets via footswitches (and the setup of that isnt that easy either). So I wouldn't particularly recommend people spend £325+ on a C4 and controller if it is just to replace their envelope filter and octaver, but it does also do a lot of great synth sounds so is probably is worth it if you want that too.

I haven't used one but I'd be tempted with the fly-rig. Everything in one place, no need for extra cables/power supplies. Chorus, boost/distortion, fuzz, octave, EQ, Tuner, compressor, XLR out, headphone out. It looks like you can just have the fuzz on: "The controls interact so that you can get dynamically-filtered clean, fuzz, and octave, as well as octave and fuzz together. When Q is at minimum, Range becomes a high-cut tone filter for different versions of clean, fuzz, octave, and octave and fuzz together. You can then blend any of these combinations with your direct signal via the Mix control"

It's not all bad. Bands nowadays don't necessarily need major labels to promote and distribute their music globally, they don't need to play a venue in every town to reach that audience and build their fanbase, they don't need to spend £££ on fancy studios and producers to get a decent sound, can easily collaborate online, can easily set up webstores to sell merchandising directly to people around the world. Perhaps musicians on average earn less nowadays to 40 years ago, I wouldn't be so sure though - they might get paid less for playing live and make less from selling music, but the overheads are much lower and there are lower barriers to getting into it.

This reminds me of 'when the levee breaks' intro posted earlier. Nothing fancy but a great big drum sound:

Just for new DIY UK genres in the last 20 years there's been Grime, Dubstep, UK Drill, as well as various of offshoots of Drum N Bass and Techno, a fair bit going on with UK Dub too.....admittedly none of that really includes full 'bands' so perhaps the days of bands with Bass players are a bit numbered- until trends change? But as far as independent DIY music scenes I think there's just as much, if not more, going on nowadays and a lot of the artists are getting pretty big. Perhaps Stormzy isn't your thing, and there is no band involved but he's headlined Glastonbury and hasn't been given handouts to get where he is - the grime/UK hip hop scene is all DIY, pirate stations, small clubs, small DIY labels etc. It's musical talent and hard work, just presented in a different way and with a different set of skills to 1980's rock bands.

In the 60-70s there wasn't hip hop, techno, drum n bass etc. so if you were into making music then being in a band was the main route, not so much nowadays - it's fragmented and there are lots of other ways to express yourself musically other than playing in a band and lots of other ways of being heard and making money from music other than signing to a major label and doing massive tours. So I guess it's inevitable there will be fewer new bands filling stadiums. Also, to get to the point of being big enough to fill stadiums takes a long time, over the last 20 years or so there have been bands formed like Ghost, The Strokes, Royal Blood, Arctic Monkeys, Maroon 5, Biffy Clyro, Arcade Fire, Bring me the Horizon, Mumford & Sons, Florence and the Machine etc. that all fill big venues and headline festivals. I guess if they can stay together and make a couple more well received albums they'll be filling stadiums in a few years. I wouldn't discount the likes of stadium filling pop stars like Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Lana Del Ray, Ed Sheeran, Lorde, Adele etc. they often have live backing bands/session musicians and aren't really doing things that differently to the way pop star singers in the past did things.

Yeah, I'm with you on the high gain thing. I mostly listen/play Reggae and Funk so don't need it for that (and I expect 90% of Bass players play genres that don't really need it much, or can just add a distortion pedal ahead of the amp). I do like heavy Stoner and Doom big fuzzy riff stuff sometimes, I'm no expert on it but I think even with that heavy fuzzy sounding stuff most bands achieve it with a relatively clean Bass sound that is set to compliment/blend with the guitar riffs. Going for a high-gain Bass sound works practicing at home and with headphones but in a band and live setting it crosses into guitar frequencies while also losing some low end (and that's if the real life Bass cab can even replicate the high-frequencies) so overall the band sounds less heavy than if the Bass just stayed relatively clean.

Excellent selection @meterman keep them coming. I'd sign up for breakschat (I'm on a Facebook group called 'jungle beardstroke massive'!)

I've definitely spent 100s of hours listening to that break and this one sped up/cut up:

Yeah, I don't think I'll be buying any presets. It's quite useful to see how others have done things though - particularly split path stuff. I'll probably buy more IRs at some point, just got these for $1 and am liking them https://www.drbonkerssoundlab.com/product/dr-bonkers-in-this-together-cab-pack-ir-collection/

Yeah I can't figure out why he does that though - it's very exact in all the balanced eq settings for the amp settings he does but it seems like the output volumes aren't matched to unity at all so need mucking about with to get to unity.

I like the Dr tone stuff but don't understand his overall output level settings. That one for example: adding +12dB Bass and +10dB Highs (and - 6dB mids) and overall level +6dB.... put that in as a parametric eq setting and it sounds good but is a massive volume boost (similar for a lot of his other settings). Why the +6dB overall level? It seems to need more like - 6dB to be unity.

I'm not sure why, but saving presets as 'bypassed' doesn't solve it either. The DMC still automatically turns the C4 on when scrolling through any presets (whether they are set to bypassed or not as a preset). I assume it's the DMC causing the issue because if the DMC uses its device preset page list (e.g preset A001, A002 etc, for device A) then long holding the left FS will engage/disengage it sending anything to the C4, so you can disengage while scrolling through presets then hold down again to engage. It's a bit of a shame though as the DMC main preset list (e.g. P001 etc.) is the one that you can rename the presets on the DMC display but you can't disengage by holding down the left FS when viewing that list as it goes to 'save'. There's probably a solution buried somewhere in the DMC menus but I'll give up for now as it might just be because I'm using a Beta version for the preset naming function and they haven't ironed everything out yet.

Does anyone know if there is a setting buried somewhere on Neuro or on the DMC micro to stop the DMC turning on the C4 while scrolling through preset numbers?

Top 3 for me are probably: Robbie Shakespeare Bernard Edwards Bootsy Collins

A couple of tips: 'Action' and 'Page>' buttons together to access the Tuner/mute. So you can use the footswitch for something else. Unless you use an expression pedal it's well worth getting a dual footswitch. I got a Mosky from eBay for £15.99 including postage and it works fine (need to go on global settings and invert the polarity for FS4 to be on the left and FS5 on the right). (EDIT: That global setting polarity invert doesn't seem to work with this for some reason but changing the FS assign in Preferences seems to do the job). I've assigned FS1, 2, 3 ,4 as stomps (as it has no light I'll generally stick with 4th being one style of effect to make things simple) and FS5 is the 'Page>' button so I can access the menu to then scroll presets/snapshots/stomp views. Stomp control over 4x effects blocks at any one time (and can have more than one block assigned to a FS) should be plenty as I'll use the other 4 blocks for things like FX Loop, Amp & Cab, EQ, IRs that don't really need FS control and can have different snapshots for them on/off in different combinations.

I'm currently going for the Helix method of pressing 'Action' and 'Page>' buttons together to access the Tuner/mute. It's not as instant as having a footswitch, but like you say - it's not something that's needed all the time so I don't think is a big deal to do (and pressing any footswitch disengages it), and it frees up a Helix footswitch and board space/wiring/power/potential added noise etc. of having a separate tuner pedal. But I suppose ideally I'd like to have backup for things like Tuner/Compressor/Preamp & DI in a live situation just in-case the Helix decides to stop working. I was thinking something like the Microbass 3, seems a lot to spend on a backup though. Anyway, back to the OP question: I'd recommend the Korg Pitchblack tuner pedals, they do the job well.

Warning! Ramble ahead! I'm thinking out loud here as was already writing this down to figure out Helix Stomp routing options out so please ignore if you don't want to see a long Helix routing chain of thought! Perhaps someone has time on their hands and is trying to figure out similar stuff or has some tips though. Current setup is Helix Stomp with this routing: Helix FX Loop L: Switchblade Pro (which means you can reverse the order of loops, or put them parallel/series, or clean blend) Loop A: C4 (with DMC controller)> Crimson Red Preamp > Brown Acid Fuzz Loop B: Octamizer Octaver > Gemini Chorus Helix FX Loop R (once I have the correct cables, it's just in Loop L after the Switchblade output at the moment) FEA Compressor (+ 2 channel footswitch is on the way to use in the Helix expression pedal input to control the preset menu button and tuner/tap tempo). That setup means footswitch control to do things like: FS1 Helix OD > FS2 Loop L to Switchblade Pro controlling loops for Chorus/Octaver before/after C4/Crimson Red/Brown Acid each with their own footswitch > FS3 Helix Reverb > Loop R with FEA comp (no FS) > Helix Amp/Cab (no FS). = 5 blocks used. The Helix and C4 do pretty good impressions of the Gemini and Octamizer (especially as they generally have other effects running after them) so it seems an alright idea to sell them, that possibly also does away for the need of the Switchblade Pro. Selling those three would raise about £300 so I'm trying to figure out how to replicate their routing. To replicate my current routing options the Helix Octaver and Chorus blocks need to be moved either side of the Loop L block and saved as different Presets. Preset 1a: FS1 Helix OD > FS2 Helix Octaver > FS3 Helix Chorus > Helix Loop L (C4 > Crimson Red > Brown Acid: No FS - always on, use individual pedals on/off) > Helix Reverb (no FS, controlled via snapshots) > Helix Loop R (FEA Comp: no FS - always on, use individual pedal on/off) > Helix Amp/Cab (no FS, always on) Preset 1b: FS1 Helix OD > Helix Loop L (C4 > Crimson Red > Brown Acid: No FS - always on, use individual pedals on/off) > FS2 Helix Octaver > FS3 FS3 Helix Chorus > Helix Reverb (no FS, controlled via snapshots) > Helix Loop R (FEA Comp: no FS - always on, use individual pedal on/off) > Helix Amp/Cab (no FS) This takes me from using 5 blocks in my current setup to 7 and I'd lose the Helix Reverb FS (but could have different Snapshots with that on/off), and I'd lose the Helix Loop L footswitch so that'd need to be always on and controlled by clicking individual pedals on/off. My conclusion is that it takes quite a bit of planning! Technically it is possible to replicate the current routing options but there are tradeoffs: The individual pedals sound a bit better and have hands-on control and more immediate re-routing control, two more Helix blocks need to be used if those pedals go and it loses some individual FS control so several Presets/snapshots are needed to do it all via FS selection which is a bit more tricky and less spontaneous and intuitive to control.....I can't decide if that is is a £300 tradeoff worth making so for the time being I'm removing the Octamizer, Gemini and Switchblade Pro from the board to see how much I miss them. If you read all that then well done! Now get out in the sun!

Is there an easy way to move around preset numbers on the Neuro Editor? The only way I seem to be able to do it is open then and save into a different number then erase the original.

Might be tricky to sound like this though:

That's exactly it, there are always some 'tone is all in the fingers - no need for effects pedals' people but generally they are playing something like motown (and often they are getting different tones via owning many Bass guitars, different strings, amps and cabs etc. which is stuff certain pedals can sort of do). You'd be hard pressed to do envelope filter sounds or big fuzzy riffs or synth sounds without effects pedals....but perhaps those sounds don't go with what you play so aren't needed. They're fun to practise with though so a cheap multi fx like zoom is probably worthwhile to test the waters.