New MXR bass synth pedal released

[mattpbass]

35 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

 

Do you have the MXR also? An A/B of the MXR vs the v4.5 FI VIP would be very useful / helpful for many, particularly as there's only £20 in it price wise new.

I do currently, only intend to keep one, but I’ll report back when I have both to compare. For context I play actual bass synth on every gig currently, not wanting or expecting these to be as good or replace that, just a fun alternative to play around with. 

[Quatschmacher]

10 minutes ago, mattpbass said:

I do currently, only intend to keep one, but I’ll report back when I have both to compare. For context I play actual bass synth on every gig currently, not wanting or expecting these to be as good or replace that, just a fun alternative to play around with. 

The FI is an actual synth and its VA engine can be played from a keyboard. True, it doesn’t have anywhere near all its parameters accessible from the panel, but is very much a fully-featured mono synth as far as its sound-creation capabilities are concerned.

 

I pitted it against my Subsequent 37 in a blind audio test and most people could not tell which was which. 

Edited yesterday at 14:07 by Quatschmacher

[mattpbass]

4 minutes ago, Quatschmacher said:

The FI is an actual synth and its VA engine can be played from a keyboard. True, it doesn’t have anywhere near all its parameters accessible from the panel, but is very much a fully-featured mono synth as far as its sound-creation capabilities are concerned.

 

I pitted it against my Subsequent 37 in a blind audio test and most people could not tell which was which. 

Yeah I understand that it’s a synth, I just meant I use a physical keyboard (including a Subsequent 37 amongst others), which from a playing precision side of things is still a lot less compromised compared to a bass and pedal, including this MXR pedal, and I assume the FI4 too. 

[SumOne]

On 31/01/2026 at 10:09, AndyTheBassBison said:

The honeymoon period is over and I’m still loving this pedal although it isn’t perfect. Tracking isn’t quite good enough to do ‘ain’t nobody’ live so I’ve gone back to using my oc5 in modern/poly mode for that song. I find the octaver setting on the mxr is good but isn’t a replacement for the OC5.

That's interesting as my synth bass pedal conclusion usually is:

 

Honeymoon period = 'most fun effect pedal ever, hours of tweaking, this'll sound amazing live'.

 

Then after a few weeks 'the sounds are actually a bit cheesy, I spend too long tweaking it instead of playing, not sure I can trust it live and it feels a bit disconnected/tracking can be an issue'

 

After a couple of months 'Sell it as I'm better off with envelope filters, octavers, overdrive, modulation etc. that feel immediate and reliable and like Bass guitar effects instead of a cheesy outdated synth'.

 

I think this MXR and the latest Future Impact version might change my thinking though.