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Filter Freaks...Best Evelope Filter for Slap/Pop?

soulplane83

soulplane83

Aug 16, 2008
348
5
Portland, OR
#1
Sup errbody

Given that the sound of an envelope filter is so dependent on its settings and, more importantly, your attack, what are some of your choices for an envelope filter when slapping/popping. I'll probably be running a 2 filter setup, so I'm not looking for a versatile filter, but rather just the best one for slapping. As far as soundclips go, the EBS Bass IQ sounds hard to beat in that category. Any others I should check out?
 
#12
Personally I'm not a big slapper and I'm not all that fond of slapping with a filter on, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd agree with those who said the EMMA. I don't like super wet or thick filters when slapping because it's just too peaky all around. IMO, you get nothing but trebly highs from it. In general I like an autowah better for slap.

That said, while I ended up getting rid of the EMMA for not being wet enough, that's what made it good for slapping.

As a side note, one of my projects is a RHCP tribute band and so I've used a couple different filters for copping tones. For the break in Power of Equality, I slap using a DOD FX25 which is I believe what Flea used on the record.
 
#15
Looks like the Maxon AF-9 is popular. I was going to suggest the Mu-Tron III or Mu-Tron III+ (reissue). The AF-9 is supposed to sound like the Mu-Tron, but when I tried it in the store, it just didn't respond the same. I want to like the AF-9 (it sure is a lot smaller & easier to power), but I couldn't make it sound like the original... oh well, YMMV!

That said, the Mu-Tron circuit has a nice, natural compression to it that is perfect for slap/pop techniques.
 
#17
I've used a EBS IQ, EH Bassballs, and a QTron. Of the 3, my fav is the IQ. Really worked well for me and was very responsive dynamically. The Bassballs works well also, but is quite a bit different tonally and doesn't respond as well to dynamic changes. I really didn't like the QTRon at all, just didn't work well for me. The other nice thing about the IQ is that you can set it up as either an up or down sweep or set it on auto-wah, which is nice for slapping.
 
#18
EBS. Sounds perfect for me, utterly reliable and I don't have to tweak the knobs every time I set up.

DOD was great except that the filter was really low and I wasn't looking for dub sounds.

Boss AutoWha sucked big time (noisy, hard to control, noisy, unreliable, and noisy).

Q-Tron had some real problems with setting levels, it needed to be tweaked a LOT every gig (heck, even between sets!), and it took up a lot of real estate. Add in that it had special power supply and it just wasn't worth the hassles to me.

jte
 

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