New MXR bass synth pedal released

[Sharkfinger]

8 minutes ago, Greg Edwards69 said:

If you think about it, the MXR is effectively a combination of pedals as well, stuffed into a single pedal. The presets are effectively like snapshots on the helix.

That's 100% what I want.  Like someone else here said, if it nails the sounds we love (don't care how it's achieved frankly), the ease of use of a single stomp, and has the accurate tracking and low latency... Well, that's the holy grail right? It will almost certainly outsell every other synth pedal released recently, combined.

 

[GisserD]

14 minutes ago, Sharkfinger said:

That's 100% what I want.  Like someone else here said, if it nails the sounds we love (don't care how it's achieved frankly), the ease of use of a single stomp, and has the accurate tracking and low latency... Well, that's the holy grail right? It will almost certainly outsell every other synth pedal released recently, combined.

 

Future impact V4 already acheives this i hear. But i think the reason it hasnt taken off is that its too complicated. I beleive a more cut down version of the FI (in a small modern enclosure) would have sold much better. Think about it, theres nothing the MXR can do that the FI cant.....

[Quatschmacher]

3 minutes ago, GisserD said:

Future impact V4 already acheives this i hear. But i think the reason it hasnt taken off is that its too complicated. I beleive a more cut down version of the FI (in a small modern enclosure) would have sold much better. Think about it, theres nothing the MXR can do that the FI cant.....

Partly lack of marketing, partly not loading it with cover band patches. Even if not using the editor, with a few properly tailored presets, the V4’s onboard controls would give you way more control than the MXR (apart from the lack of a compressor) and without recourse to hidden secondary functions. 

[Quatschmacher]

1 hour ago, Sharkfinger said:

This is why I'm so baffled that a 20+ year old pedal like the Bass Synth Wah can nail the tracking so well.

I am not familiar with this pedal. I wonder if it’s using a similar principle to the Boss SY-1 which doesn’t actually do any pitch conversion, rather it overlays/processes the incoming audio with additional spectral information to give the impression of a synth; there there is no tracking latency as it’s not tracking pitch at all. 

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, Sharkfinger said:

This is why I'm so baffled that a 20+ year old pedal like the Bass Synth Wah can nail the tracking so well.  Such a shame I don't like the synth sounds, I don't find them in the least usable.  Can't say I'm crazy about the octave tone either but it was a small price to pay for the tracking accuracy a

 

Because it isn't tracking at all, it is putting a wah on the signal then doing a sort of bitcrush distortion thing to make the 'synth like' effect.

 

The easiest way to track a signal is to not try!

[Al Krow]

On 16/07/2025 at 12:03, Quatschmacher said:

Partly lack of marketing, partly not loading it with cover band patches. Even if not using the editor, with a few properly tailored presets, the V4’s onboard controls would give you way more control than the MXR (apart from the lack of a compressor) and without recourse to hidden secondary functions. 

 

The other obvious advantages of the FI over the MXR:

- input gain

- 99 presets, in banks of 10 (sure, I get that is overkill for many)

- two stomp switches

- display

- midi

 

The FI v4 VIP has a pedal-board friendly format not too far off what the MXR delivers

 

My tuppence worth, if I may, if Andreas wants to stay in the game with the advent of the MXR

 

Two obvious improvements to suggest:

- improved display. Boss stole a lead on this some while ago - please check their 200 series => can label patches with words and not just numbers. "Chaka Khan" is so much easier to remember than "#06"!

- load patches 1 - 10 with popular cover band patches

 

Marketing:

Why aren't there any decent YT clips of bass-players using the FI v4 VIP live in a band in the way that Paddy has just posted?

Edited 21 hours ago by Al Krow

[Quatschmacher]

29 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Two obvious improvements to suggest:

- improved display. Boss stole a lead on this some while ago - please check their 200 series => can label patches with words and not just numbers. "Chaka Khan" is so much easier to remember than "#06"!

In theory this ought to be possible as the patch files contain a 32-character name already. 

 

30 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

load patches 1 - 10 with popular cover band patches

That could easily be done in the next update. (Even before as it’s just a question of assembling them and uploading the bank file to the cloud.)

 

32 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Why aren't there any decent YT clips of bass-players using the FI v4 VIP live in a band in the way that Paddy has just posted?

I presume rhetorical. Mainly because no one has bothered to do any. I did get Panda to send Gaz Williams a unit with the express outcome that he’d record a video but a year on he’s still not got around to it!

 

I’ve just revived an old idea of mine for being able to move patches around on the pedal without recourse to the editor as I’ve finally had the headspace to flesh out a nice UI for it. Let’s see if it’s possible as regards the actual coding. 

[LawrenceH]

OK I am breaking a self-imposed decade-long exile from posting to chime in here, because I just got the Future Impact VIP that was up for sale and I'm so bloody impressed with it as a product. You guys are absolutely right - in fact, I'd said something eerily similar to Peter earlier today in a private chat where he was very kindly giving me advice on a usb-midi converter.

 

First up - tracking on the VIP is stellar. I don't have the MXR, but I own the Source C4 and used to own the original Deep Impact. This feels both immediate and accurate, it gives me that finger-ear connection that makes me believe I'm playing an instrument. Feed it clean bass with clean technique and octaves jumps, slides, ghost notes, bends are no problem. The only thing that might improve it a little bit is some kind of training mode with AI or similar to give even better, context-dependent note-on/-off triggering. But it's already really, really good. If you're competent enough to play in a funky covers band then this pedal will do what you want with minimal adaptation to your playing style, you can play it and still feel like a bassist.

 

Sonically, I only needed to play through a few presets to hear very clearly that this will do anything that is showcased on that MXR demo, and more besides; including stuff the MXR can't do to the best of my knowledge but stuff that's still useful for actual real-world bassists. E.g. some of those classic bass monosynth patches a la MJ or Herbie rely on mixed waveform voices and/or pulse width modulation. The MXR 'voice' button is a bit of a black box that sort of kind of maybe covers these a bit but definitely not to the extent the FIV4 does. The FIv4 filters and associated envelopes sound great in a way the C4 can't manage; the sweeps are smooth, the tone is fat and pristine in a good way, that'll dirty up nicely if desired. In particular the very starts of the notes are the first time I've been convinced by a bass synth.

 

Ergonomically, the VIP makes this much pedalboard friendly and the metal finish looks good, better in real life than on-screen. In an ideal world a future hardware revision would include LCD screen, USB interface and either rotation of the VIP casing 90 degrees while retaining top cable entry, or an additional footswitch for separating patch up/down functions. At the moment fast-pressing moves you down a patch number instead of up, it is ok when you get used to it.

 

As Al has said above: The big but very solvable problem is that the v4/VIP presets showcase the power and quality of the pedal but by and large aren't at all useful for the average gigging bassist in a band. All it needs is slots 1-10, or better 1-20, to be filled with a range of presets chosen to mimic synth bass in classic tracks a la the MXR, and it would elevate it to the undisputed top of the pile. It wouldn't matter how easy it is to edit beyond the basic level and dynamics controls on the front, because the users that feared the editor would never need to touch it. That'd probably also help with the dearth of decent Youtube demos, since bass reviewers wouldn't have to gain programming expertise first. I think part of the issue for the FI is that the people developing it are way more adventurous and forward-looking than us bassists! As it is, for now we just have to accept getting our editing fingers dirty or at least downloading some of QM's excellent patches. Hence my question to him about an appropriate MIDI adaptor. A secondary problem is that a lot of the useful online info about the FIv4 is buried in gigantic megathreads here and at the Other Place, that are hard to search or browse efficiently.

 

Honestly I love the MXR demo and am still keen to try one, but I think once the hype has died down the FIv4 will emerge as still being current best-in-class for synth bass. It's not just powerful, it's musical and fun. Right I'll climb off my soap box now!

 

Be interested to hear people's takes on which classic synth bass tracks would make the cut for a preset top ten or top twenty...

 

 

[Quatschmacher]

16 minutes ago, LawrenceH said:

The only thing that might improve it a little bit is some kind of training mode with AI or similar to give even better, context-dependent note-on/-off triggering.

Funny you should say that; I’d made a similar suggestion during FI v4 development. One of the next things in the pipeline is a neural-net trained tracking system which will improve things further (using real-world playing clips). During testing, we got a taste of how fast this could be but it was causing crashes. Once those wrinkles have been ironed out, it’ll be fantastic.

 

@LawrenceH please duplicate your post in the big FI thread. 

Edited Wednesday at 13:33 by Quatschmacher

[LawrenceH]

Done. And there's me posting in the very megathread I was grumbling about being hard to mine for info! 🙃

[Quatschmacher]

It’s inevitable to look for comparisons. Here’s the FI v3 doing a classic Greg Philingaines part and coping pretty well:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dt5u-xJGXNTmXBKSkYH7fSTBPm5vTlgV/view?usp=drivesdk

 

Here’s the isolated part:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EBujKhsBj4awZp1YbbgglrSPeljJ_R2H/view?usp=drivesdk

Edited Wednesday at 14:50 by Quatschmacher

[Al Krow]

I've added in midi to the FI additional capabilities list on my earlier above.

[LukeFRC]

interesting how this thread ended up talking about the Fi4 - and the US version ended up talking about the C4 ... !

[Al Krow]

14 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

interesting how this thread ended up talking about the Fi4 - and the US version ended up talking about the C4 ... !

 

Well the FI is the much more home-grown product over here and vice versa for the C4? 😊

[Sibob]

On 16/07/2025 at 13:51, Quatschmacher said:

 

I presume rhetorical. Mainly because no one has bothered to do any. I did get Panda to send Gaz Williams a unit with the express outcome that he’d record a video but a year on he’s still not got around to it!

Assuming it was a loaner pedal, time to get that pedal back and have it sent to someone who will actually make a video! If it was payment for content, then, I love Gaz, but that’s bad form not to have fulfilled his part of the deal after a year.

 

For me, form factor and workflow is key here. The FI sounds great, but for my brain, the form factor and general workflow of the MXR wins out, for others, those things won’t matter so much, so for the price-point, the FI probably wins out. Shrink the FI down by what is probably nearly half, and I could perhaps overlook/relearn workflow…but I’m guessing that’s a significant undertaking, if not impossible. 
 

Luckily, both are available to us all….what a time to be alive 🙂

 

Si

Edited 2 hours ago by Sibob

[LukeFRC]

3 minutes ago, Sibob said:

Shrink the FI down by what is probably nearly half,

like this?

 

[Quatschmacher]

17 minutes ago, Sibob said:

Shrink the FI down by what is probably nearly half, and I could perhaps overlook/relearn workflow…

Also, as mentioned, I’m in discussion with Andras about implementing a way to copy/move patches using only the pedal itself and that is looking like it’ll be doable. 

 

Furthermore, in v4 you have full 128-step resolution of the on-pedal parameter edits (unlike the coarse 10-step ones in v1-3).

Edited 2 hours ago by Quatschmacher

[Sibob]

Oh there you go, I had no idea that existed. Exactly! Although, without this turning into an R&D session, I’m not sure why they both sizes exist?! End of Life the big version, dump the savings from tooling costs into the small version to get the price down slightly. But even a hike of £20-30 would still be palatable for the feature-set and form factor probably (without researching).

 

If the big version had more features/controls, totally get it. But otherwise, £60 has been added for form factor alone, whereas the opportunity was there to only do V4 as the smaller version, reducing the size and adding/upgrading features from V3, therefore increasing the perceived value and legitimizing the price increase further.

 

Anyway, no-one asked me to monologue lol. 
YMMV.

Etc.

 

Si

 

p.s.

This is just after a very cursory look at the FI offerings, I may well have missed something and so apologies if I have. Wrangling an 17 month old at the same time is not great for detail haha. 

Edited 2 hours ago by Sibob

[Sibob]

I am also now very conscious that I’m further derailing the thread. It might be better to move to the FI thread if we continue this train of thought. 
 

While discussion around comparisons is inevitable, derailing this further from the MXR pedal isn’t fair to the OP. 

 

Cheers

Si

[Al Krow]

3 minutes ago, Sibob said:

Anyway, no-one asked me to monologue lol. 
YMMV.

 

Haha, you and me both!

 

I guess having owned and tried really hard to love the FI multiple times (I've had five attempts from v1 onwards!) over the years and never quite managing it, there's definitely an element of "if they could just do that" e.g. decent tracking, form factor, make it accessible by loading with popular 'known' patches, replace the numerical display with something that displays words (Boss 200 series, many midi pedals do this). But András and crew, to their credit, are definitely getting there and there's been more progress with the FI than a lot of the competition - remember the Markbass Super Synth anyone?!

 

Getting us back on topic: the trouble for FI/C4/Boss et al. / good news for us bass players is that MXR Synth has arrived on the scene and is already providing a great deal of what we want in a synth pedal and is rightly causing a stir.

[Sibob]

2 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Haha, you and me both!

 

I guess having owned and tried really hard to love the FI multiple times (I've had five attempts from v1 onwards!) over the years and never quite managing it, there's definitely an element of "if they could just do that" e.g. decent tracking, form factor, make it accessible by loading with popular 'known' patches, replace the numerical display with something that displays words (Boss 200 series, many midi pedals do this). But András and crew, to their credit, are definitely getting there and there's been more progress with the FI than a lot of the competition - remember the Markbass Super Synth anyone?!

 

Getting us back on topic: the trouble for FI/C4/Boss et al. / good news for us bass players is that MXR Synth has arrived on the scene and is already providing a great deal of what we want in a synth pedal and is rightly causing a stir.

100%, I’m on the wait list, I have 3 or 4 tracks I regularly play that I know I can use those presets on. I fake it now with fuzzy/chorus/octave/envelope…but I’m all for an easy life haha.

 

I also genuinely think that IMA knows what’s up. He’s not just marketing hype, he genuinely is an excellent product/tone developer, who just so happens to have a very large audience too. MXR made a smart move on that front. 

 

Si