fraff

[quote name='absolutpepper' post='956216' date='Sep 14 2010, 04:48 PM']Oooh If you want to nail the sound exactly be prepared to spend A LOT on effects, loopers to split the signals and probably 3 amps (nevermind the basses). If you are looking for more of an approximation go with - Jazz Bass 2 Big Muffs - 1 Russian (for a more intense Fuzz) and 1 Bass Big Muff (for a more blended sound) 1 Digitech Bass Synth Wah 1 Korg G-5 if you can find one (instead of the crazily overpriced Deep Impact) 1 EH Small Clone Chorus & if budget were to allow an EH Small Stone Phaser Thats what i'd do. His core sounds are a mix of heavy and blended fuzzes and more synthesized tones. A multi will only get you so far... Also its also a common misconception that the Time Is Running Out tone comes from the Deep Impact, it is actually blended clean and fuzz tones (from Russian Big Muff) underneath a Roland synth (cant remember which at the mo).[/quote] You could also consider a Prunes & Custard in the mix too - he uses one - it gets you a nice slightly squelchy synth-fuzz in one pedal. And a Boss LS-2 is pretty handy for balancing the levels of a two separate fx loops, very handy if you're running a couple of different kinds of fuzz.

A couple of days in and I'm lovin the Buzz Bomb. It's a pretty over the top fuzz pedal this, and chucking in the oscillation effect can make it very wild indeed. It's helpful that there's a easily tweaked internal blend control so you can set up a general wet/dry blend that works for you. Of course, it would be better to have this on the outside, but it's easily worked round on my board with an LS2. The frequency of the oscillation is controlled either by the Frequency knob or the photocell - switching to photocell mode means that you can go from thick octave-down fuzz to screaming high oscillation just by moving your foot off the cell. I don't know how this will react with on stage light levels though - it seems like the range the cell gives you is dependent on the lighting levels around - makes sense I suppose - but might make things very different on stage. We'll see. Another thing this fella does is give a breaking up, stuttering effect, though it's a game of very fine adjustments between gain and frequency controls to get this in a usable musical setting, as opposed to a "that sounds nuts, but how do I use it" setting. I like the fact too that the fuzz you can get from it goes from a fat slightly old-schooly fuzz through to a nice thinner fizzy kind of fuzz. Anyhoo, all round it's great and quite unlike any fuzz I've used before. Sounds amazing chopped up through my Boss Slicer too!

[quote name='fraff' post='949459' date='Sep 8 2010, 02:23 PM']On account of it being my birthday, my lovely wife has given one of these [url="http://www.stompboxpedals.com/pedal/3xfx-v1-buzz-bomb"]bad boys[/url] - I'm gigging tonight [[url="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108646302522541"]Black Heart in Camden if anyone fancies!!![/url]] and don't want to pop this straight on my board till I play around with it properly, but will try to post some thoughts and comments on this here box once I have a chance to give it a full go.[/quote] Bleedin' venue balls up - venue has canned the gig with 4 hours notice! Nice.

On account of it being my birthday, my lovely wife has given one of these [url="http://www.stompboxpedals.com/pedal/3xfx-v1-buzz-bomb"]bad boys[/url] - I'm gigging tonight [[url="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108646302522541"]Black Heart in Camden if anyone fancies!!![/url]] and don't want to pop this straight on my board till I play around with it properly, but will try to post some thoughts and comments on this here box once I have a chance to give it a full go.

+1 on these guys as a rhythm section - they're phenominal live, I've seen them a handful of times. Each time I've seen them I think he's used a ricky throughout the set.

[quote name='bobbass4k' post='920125' date='Aug 9 2010, 09:56 PM']ZVex Mastotrron, near enough to the wooly mammoth, effectively gated and a lot more versatile, can sound quite synthy[/quote] Good call - and Theo's selling one of these at the moment - [url="http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=97395"]http://basschat.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=97395[/url]

Hey Ant Ian from fraff/xm-3a here - how's it all going up there? I'm tempted at the moment by Taking Flight's The Goose pedal which seems to offer all sorts of fuzz fun, including a gated mode. There's a good review here - [url="http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=588599"]http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=588599[/url] I'm just chasing the makers for some bass soundclips - can't find any online at the moment, but the guitar ones sound excellent and word is that the pedal has a ton of bottom end. Here's a guitar vid - [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9-zT6YBUbA"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9-zT6YBUbA[/url] $149 these days too, which I guess isn't so bad for a boutique pedal. When you valvs back down in London btw? Cheers Ian [quote name='Ant' post='919287' date='Aug 9 2010, 09:07 AM']hey hey, ive recently swapped out my distortion pedals to go back to using my pearce BC1 for distortion as it doesnt feed back forever between notes, but as its not as 'creamy' as my stacked dist pedals my synth pedal doesnt react the same way anymore and sounds loads cleaner now, so im thinking of running it in a loop with some sort of fuzz so i can get the same synthy beef sounds i had before, any recommendations? not bothered about price, doesnt even have to be that fancy as im just using it to fuzz up my synth. i guess the smaller the footprint the better. the synth im using at the moment is the pigtronix mothership and i used to use two stacked cranetortoise DD-1B distortions. you can listen to the song "thats what im talking about" on our myspace here [url="http://www.myspace.com/castrovalvamusic"]http://www.myspace.com/castrovalvamusic[/url] to hear the tone i was getting before (even though on the recording i used a different synth pedal, i still got something similar with my new setup. POW[/quote]