PatrolOfStroll

Good afternoon everybody! Yesterday, I took delivery of my first physical effects unit, and it's the venerable, dare I say LEGENDARY, SansAmp Bass Driver DI (v2). Playing around with it using phantom power, I'm extremely pleased. It's every bit as good as people say, to me, and I immediately feel that "impossible to get a bad sound out of it" quality that people ascribe to it. I can get such a huge range of tones out of it by playing with the knobs, and the way that such different sounds are almost never unpleasant to me feels outright magical. It's unbelievably satisfying to find spots in the Drive knob's range where I can get a distinct difference in dirt between using fingers and using pick. I definitely think I made the right choice, between this little box of tricks and a multi-FX unit. I almost pulled the trigger on a Boss GT-1000CORE, and though that seems to be an extremely good unit, I'm glad I went this way instead. I love the simplicity and versatility of this thing and I think I would've got lost in menus and parameters on something more complicated; I would've had a much harder time truly "sculpting" a good sound. Anyway, now that I'm situated with it and very pleased with the sound, I'm beginning to consider the other effects I may use with it once I'm a few more paycheques into my new work! I don't want a super heavy pedal set-up. I don't have a strong urge for more out-there effects, nor some of the classics of bass like touch wah or synth pedals. When I've played around with delay on bass, so far I've found it gets very messy and oppressive very quickly, and so I don't feel a draw to delay like I would if I was on six-string. I've found myself enjoying reverb most at rather subtle settings, and I realised that the settings I liked are so subtle that I can more-or-less forgo them in the name of money and future pedalboard space. I'm picturing a PT Nano board, or maybe a Nano+ at a stretch. So, basically, what I have in mind for sounds I'd enjoy playing with is as follows: - A tuner, probably the Pitchblack X Mini or a Polytune 3 Mini; - An octaver or pitch-shifter of some description, an OC-5 or an EHX Pitch Fork look like good shouts; - Fuzz, I have my eye on the EQD Hizumitas, since it looks great, has a tone filter that's calibrated in a way that seems very usable for bass, and based on demos I listen to, seems to sound great for bass in practice, too. These can (and probably should) go in front of the BDDI no problem. But, it leaves one major favourite effect of mine in a tough spot! Like so many others, I LOVE a good bass chorus tone. And, I know this is a common dilemma, but using the XLR out from the BDDI precludes using a chorus in the "correct" conventional position of coming after a preamp (which is also the recommended approach listed by Tech 21, of course). So, this is all a long-winded way of getting to my ultimate question! Does anybody here know of any demos that are out there that showcase the sounds of a chorus effect placed BEFORE a BDDI? This seems to be a common solution to the dilemma, to just put it in this less ideal spot and deal with it. But I haven't been able to find any examples to hear how this compromise sounds. Ideally, I'd like to hear a direct comparison of the same chorus on either side of the BDDI, but just being able to hear the sound of a chorus before would be extremely helpful, too. The other obvious solution would be to just use 1/4" Out from the BDDI into a chorus, and have a separate DI box afterwards, rather than using the BDDI's XLR. It incurs a little more cost and potentially a little more board space. Though, for the timebeing, I'm not even going to be using any setup somewhere where I should expect I will truly need DI Out... but I get a bit neurotic about wanting my setup to be "complete"! Rambling over. Thanks for reading, friends. Feel free to chime in if you have any experience of your own even if it's not with a demo example at hand, I'll be thankful for any sort of help and opining.

Really really tempted by this, though I'll have to hope they retain stock until I get some money in a month or so.

Their Mild Green looks absolutely fantastic to me paired with the roasted necks, in pictures and video footage both. Beautiful looker and if my own new experience with an '18 V7 is anything to go by then I bet this newer bass will be a joy to play.

Really nice out-there kinda bass! I saw one on Reverb when I was window shopping recently and it really appealed to me. Maybe in the future I'll have to bug you about how much you ended up liking it.

Indeed I will! Some other friends have corroborated similar experiences with 00s Squier guitars too, seems they treated those things as more-or-less disposable instruments back then. I'm glad the tide rose and forced Squier's boat to lift in the meantime.

Afternoon everybody. Today I've taken delivery of a second-hand V7 I ordered online from The Bass Gallery in London. Having previously owned only a 2008 Squier Affinity Jazz Bass, which I bought when I was 17, and barely played until I was almost 30, this is a big deal for me. I have a job start date coming up, and had been window shopping a lot for the time I start to receive paycheques. A few weeks ago, a friend offered me a no-strings-attached loan, to pay back at my leisure, to get myself one already, rather than waiting. At the time, I declined, and told him I'd just be patient! For every bass I liked which had sold through by the time I was paid, another would take its place in my affections by the time I had money, I told him. Well, the other night, I think he must've got sick of the pictures I was excitedly showing to him from my window shopping, so he paypal transferred 500 quid to me and said "You work it out"! Should be plenty comfortable to pay him back within 2 paycheques if not 1, so I don't feel too bad about taking his money. And I'll work out a nice little gift to send to him for his kindness too. I went and worked it out, and this is the one I picked. It was between this, or a Fender MIM Siennaburst Mustang Bass PJ that Bass Direct have had listed in their second-hand section. Seems like a beautiful instrument, but it would've cost 50 quid more than this Sire, and I had heard so much about Sire quality that I wasn't sure I'd be seeing much value from that extra 50, when we're talking a smaller bass, with 4 shorter strings, 4 string hardware, a plastic nut, and a Fender decal on the head. Back on topic. I can't believe how much better this feels than my beleaguered '08! For the past couple of lazy years of too-little practice, I had been of the opinion that, realistically, my Squier was still outstripping my ability to play it, as-in, my skill level didn't yet warrant a new bass. But playing with this, I already know now how wrong I was! Everything about this feels like a dream by comparison. Helped, no doubt, by it having had an expert's set-up performed for me, whereas the Squier and its amateur-installed aftermarket hardware only had my own handiwork, intuition, and Google skills seeing to it. But everything about it feels absolutely rock solid. I had wondered if Sire's vaunted good value mightn't have come from corners cut on tuners, bridge etc. But I truly cannot say that turned out to be the case at all, indeed I'm shocked how solid they are here, at least on mine. And the previous owner has kept it in absolutely pristine condition. It sounds great, and further to that, it's also just relieving to be free from aftermarket EMGs which in some manner or other developed a mystery microphony problem... I'm in love with it already. White finish and tort scratchplate is my ideal JBass visual combination, too, as the cherry on top. I feel like this new bass of mine has uncorked a wine bottle of enthusiasm for practicing.

Haha, thankyou kindly. Glad to see people are open-minded when it comes to this very contentious issue.

Yo, I'm Natalie from Chester. I'm a very novice player. Back when I was about 17 I bought a Squier Affinity JBass new, and barely touched it. What I now know is that undiagnosed ADHD was having its way with my attempt to keep the hobby going, as it did with many other hobbies! Anyway, a couple of years ago I stopped neglecting the poor thing, but I tinkered with it more than I played it. I got it new pickups and some not-too-expensive new hardware. An EMG JVX set I got for a steal on reverb, some nice Wilkinson tuners, and a Fender HiMass bridge that Richtone Music had on clearance. Since about a year ago my now-diagnosed ADHD has been medicated, and I've found myself committing a lot better to practicing, especially in the past few months. So it seems appropriate a time now to set myself up an account here. You can call me by she/her if you'd like, I know the name Natalie makes that feel the most natural option. I prefer they/them these days if you want, but I won't be upset by she/her at all either. So just do whatever. I'm AMAB trans which you can look up if you don't know the meaning of, but without boring any of you too much with the details, over about a decade of introspection I just feel like it's easier and makes me happier if I think of myself not as a 'gender' but rather as just who I am. If you don't like notions like that or balk at pronouns being posted, you can probably safely assume that we wouldn't get along very well, and we can keep a healthy distance! But in my experience anyway, although media people seem to like platforming some very vocal opinions about this stuff, the real people of the general public are overwhelmingly friendly and accepting. Live and let live is way easier than being angry about things that don't matter to oneself, after all. I have no doubt that the good people of Basschat are a friendly bunch glued together by our shared passion, so I'm confident I'll get along fine with everybody, anyway! I'm not one for starting fights and if somebody decides they don't like me I will simply zip my mouth and report. But... that's enough rambling about a barely relevant subject. Back to something more interesting. I find myself gravitating towards pick playing at the moment, because many of the bands I listen to the most are metal and the harder ends of rock. In particular, I have a somewhat embarrassing fixation on Japanese groups... over the years, I've found myself in some slightly awkward situations with people asking about my tastes, but having shamefully little knowledge of the west's contemporary rock scene to talk about with them, haha. My head is too stuck in Japan's late 90s and early 00s scene. Visual Kei and Nagoya Kei bands' outputs from that era comprise a massive chunk of my favourites list. Bassists I really appreciate from that category are Yu~Ki from Malice Mizer, Hitoki from Kuroyume, and Toshiya from dir en grey. Toshiya is still going strong, with a style that has evolved a lot over the years. I think he's really underrated in the bass player anglosphere, thanks to an understandable language and culture barrier. As for more recent material (and by recent I mean... over a decade of range, I suppose, lol), the Japanese band that most stands out to me is 88kasyo junrei. Their frontman and bassist, Margaret Hiroi, is I think a bit of a genius. But if you're somebody who is reading Basschat and you have any interest in Japanese rock at all, I'm quite sure you probably know about him already, and don't need me to explain! Fingerstyle players like him, as well as, of course, Cliff and Steve, are the kinds of players who keep me eager to learn and practice fingerstyle just as much as pick. (I'll work on slap eventually too, but I wanna get some fundamentals solid first!) Cliff and Steve should be pretty telling as to what my tastes in English music have been; the Guitar Hero games landed during my late teens, and those are what got me into this kind of music in the first place, as happened to many in my middle-millennial age cohort... so, we were listening to lots of classic rock and I especially gravitated towards thrash metal. And the contemporary scene going on at the time was dominated by metalcore, so as avid watchers of Scuzz and Kerrang on the telly, I was given a massive dose of Trivium And Friends, and although I don't actively listen to much of anything from those groups anymore, I still feel a deep-seated fondness any time I happen to listen to the music I kept around me back then. This is way too long-winded, so I'm cutting it off here! Glad to be here, and looking forward to chatting with everyone.