Week 14: Use For The Useless Presets & More
Synopsis
Created a couple more useful patches this week. Moved all the passable modified patches to the first couple banks for quick flipping playing to tunes. Actually found a couple applications for the presets - the vast majority actually have some rich tones in them to be heard and extracted and having those set parameters to copy as a starting point is a plus. As useless for direct application for bass as the presets are, one thing as group they aren’t is bland or lacking variety. Also the amp/cab combinations and their parameters, though fairly minimal, offer a good flexible, variable mix for practical application and they‘re all recognizably different.
Having a sweep for tone variation (pup control knob and expression pedal) looks like the most powerful control to have, and two keeps it simple and pretty ideal. Since you can basically assign any single variable to each, the ones chosen and how they interact can have a dramatic impact on flexibility and utility in application. Wouldn’t mind having a couple more but too many and it gets messy in hurry.
Whole Enchilada
Skimmed through my user patches and the presets to refresh in mind what‘s there. I seem to be developing more of a tolerance for the presets and getting a better idea of what needs to be extracted from the tone and what left in to suit my needs. If nothing else the presets do have a richness of tone about them. So I have finally found a use for the presets.
Wrote a couple more patches, one off the presets and one off my user patches. Seems the one from the presets was again a modification of HendrixWah (preset not user version - not the same things anymore), mostly just taking the distortion out. Took a good 20 minutes or so to hard copy those parameters and punch them into the other patch. Makes me wonder if that could be worked around with the SYSEX file thing or if that’s just a bulk transfer, which is what the manual indicates. The other patch was a darker variation off the Entwhistle tone without the distortion. Another thing in messing with the Entwhistle style it’s got me to thinking more toward that lead style of play and not just holding the bottom end down, not nearly to the Entwhistle extreme though. Also more consciousness of fingering hand at the neck where there’s more string movement.
Another thing I did was relocate the user patches I’m passably satisfied with to the first couple banks so they were up front and together instead of scattered out, so I could quickly skim through them to play to tunes. One of the neat things about a unit like this is you can easily shift through tones to a tune that you would never choose for it, hands free due to the pedals no less. If it doesn’t work at all, a tap of the toe moves you on to the next one.
I was surprised at how well my original Hendrix modification (user) worked to tunes and how little the distortion component came through the mix. What mostly came out played to some 30 different tunes was a kind of melodic earthquake tone. A nice, deep, cutting, driving tone with clarity and definition (another cool thing about the V Bass is you can get such tones at speech level volume). The only noticeable distortion was on the attack and G string, often on the E, A, and D strings it wasn’t noticeable at all - depending on the tune. To some tunes the same tone was comparably muddy and ill-defined.
I thought if I could get the same tone with no distortion at all that would be a keeper patch. Messed with that a little but no success to my satisfaction. What I discovered in the process was the expression pedal setting was the only one I hadn’t changed to a volume control, but was left on wah. So the pitch could be altered which so happens also alters the apparent distortion. Not enough to meet my desire for some tunes but enough for a majority. I’ve known some players that weren’t effects guys but they used a wah pedal. Lot of variation on a tone using a wah. So a second find this week for a practical use of the presets since different preset patches have some variation on what the expression pedal controls. If not for the presets I may have cut out something that will be useful in future patch editing.
Another thing I discovered was I turned the distortion effects off for my original Hendrix Mod. The distortion was coming from the amp (“Hi Gain”
and was putting out a very good tube distortion. Unfortunately I couldn’t eliminate the distortion without trashing the tone otherwise. Running through the other amp models cut out the distortion but didn’t capture the tone otherwise. What was apparent was all the amp models sounded distinctly different with a pretty decent variation in tone, and that‘s without touching any of their parameters. There may not be as many amp/cab options as on other units, like the bass pod, but they’re not a bad selection.
Another observation that is turning into a pattern is the use of a variable control - whether in a pedal or knob. It seems like about any tone parameter that you can sweep through and hear the results is preferable to one that’s fixed (whether internally adjustable or not) or switchable. Turning the onboard volume into a blend has worked out great and yields useful variations in tone. I wish the controller had a couple more such knobs on it. I can see why the V Bass has a jack for an additional external expression pedal, assuming you could use them both at the same time.
