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Geddy Lee Sansamp Pedal!

#1,041
JKos said:
It's quite possible to design a logic circuit that may power on in a random 0 or 1 state. Perhaps by omission. Even in this case, some units may always power up in one or the other state.

It's also possible to insure a logic circuit powers up in a given state.

It simply sounds as if Tech 21 went from the first case to the second case. It was likely a very simple change.

- John
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Still sounds like a mistake to me. Or as Dave would put it, a big fat "gooch!"
 
#1,042
a-37 said:
Your pedal will consistently do one or the other and is therefore not defective. ... This is how I understood it but there was an alternative explanation posted above while I typed. I might have misunderstood.
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I'm not implying any inside knowledge of this particular instance. Just a general note that a random logic state is possible by design (intentional or not).
scottfeldstein said:
Still sounds like a mistake to me. Or as Dave would put it, a big fat "gooch!"
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"... a big fat gooch!" seems a bit strong. Was a spec provided to customers as to whether the pedal will power up on or off?

- John
 
#1,043
JKos said:
I'm not implying any inside knowledge of this particular instance. Just a general note that a random logic state is possible by design (intentional or not).

"... a big fat gooch!" seems a bit strong. Was a spec provided to customers as to whether the pedal will power up on or off?

- John
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I only mean to say "an oversight." Surely it wasn't a design spec from their engineering department to do it this way for a while and then do it that way for a while...
 
#1,044
scottfeldstein said:
I sat down again after a while away from it to see what's what. I flattened my amp eq, then compared it with the sample settings in the manual.
  1. Geddy Lee: No. Too much drive, too little bottom end.
  2. YYZ Jazz bass: No. Just not...doing enough to change the sound. It isn't Geddying.
  3. Roundabout: Yes! (No pun intended.) Now there's some settings I could pretty much keep on full time. At real volume, I might have to dial in some additional bump in the lows or low-mids, but this is a good one. It's scooping the mids and adding just the right amount of sustain, especially to the higher notes.
  4. Rickenbacker: Yes. It's almost as good as the Roundabout. I could live with it and I like it compared to the bypassed sound.
  5. Jack Bruce: No. What is this, supposed to make me sound like a P-bass through an SVT? Not working. Not good.
  6. Tool: No. It isn't Geddying and it has too much drive.
  7. Les Claypool: No. Again, too much drive, not enough shaping.
  8. Warm Tube Studio: Meh. It's ok. Nice, even. But that's really subtle stuff. In a live situation I might as well not have it on.
  9. Bi-amped Overdrive: No. There's way too wide a divide between the Deep and the Drive sides. They aren't marrying in the middle. Unusable.
What have we learned. Well, I think the "Tight" button is an essential distinguishing feature of this pedal. You could find usable settings without it, but then again you could use other pedals. Also, I think the Drive and the Mix balance are essential, try to keep both in the neighborhood of noon. You can do fun stuff with the EQ knobs, but with the tight switch on there's nowhere to go with the Bass knob but well past noon. The rest of it is kind of season to taste.

Note: these are all tested on my Warwick Rockbass Corvette $$ 5-string. Both pickups wide open, tone just slightly rolled off, with old Lo-Riders on. This is going through my Carvin BX1500 (flat EQ) and out my Peavey Headliner 112 cab with tweeter on. Also, I played finger style, no pick. I wasn't slapping, either. But when I do slap, I usually engage a scooped graphic EQ on the amp.

Can't wait to try these on my 98 Jazz bass that's arriving on Tuesday!
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The wonderfully cool thing about Tech 21 NYC products is that they are "intuitive" in that the settings in the manual are good starting points and results vary greatly depending on attack among other things. Just like a tube amp, the more you dig in the nastier it gets. Side note the "Jazz Bass" and "Rickenbacker" settings were settings I came up with for the demo and made it into the manual. Glad you dig it!
 
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#1,045
Gefilter1001 said:
The wonderfully cool thing about Tech 21 NYC products is that they are "intuitive" in that the settings in the manual are good starting points and results vary greatly depending on attack among other things. Just like a tube amp, the more you dig in the nastier it gets. Side note the "Jazz Bass" and "Rickenbacker" settings were settings I came up with for the demo and made it into the manual. Glad you dig it!
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Where Can I see your demo??
 
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#1,048
FWIW, I used the YYZ in a home practice situation last night in which I wanted to sound nothing like Geddy. Just rehearsing through some theater production parts. It also works swimmingly well at just being a great tube amp in a box. Way more character and flexibility than just plugging into a direct box, and of course the potential to shred like Ged.
 
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#1,049
Trying to sum up this pedal. The tight button is a unique feature. It's kind of a shaped high pass filter that really changes the character of your sound. I'm sure you could find good sounds without it, but those sounds could probably be had with other pedals, too. The dirt circuit is...pretty plain...and yet when you blend it with the deep side I feel like there is some kind of psychoacoustic magic happening there that makes your brain hear tubes. Neat stuff.
 
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#1,050
scottfeldstein said:
The dirt circuit is...pretty plain...and yet when you blend it with the deep side I feel like there is some kind of psychoacoustic magic happening there that makes your brain hear tubes. Neat stuff.
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This, right here, is the beauty of the Tech 21 NYC all analog tube amp emulation.
 
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#1,051
Gefilter1001 said:
This, right here, is the beauty of the Tech 21 NYC all analog tube amp emulation.
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It's interesting. I have never . . . EVER . . . liked the overdrive sound to be had when cranking the gain of previous Sansamp products, like the original bass driver, the VT Bass and VT Bass DI. I know some people do, and that's fine. But I LOOOOOVE the overdrive sound that comes out of the YYZ when used in conjunction with the deep side. Both at subtle settings and more extreme distortion settings. It's a magical thing.
 
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#1,053
jacoby75 said:
It's interesting. I have never . . . EVER . . . liked the overdrive sound to be had when cranking the gain of previous Sansamp products, like the original bass driver, the VT Bass and VT Bass DI. I know some people do, and that's fine. But I LOOOOOVE the overdrive sound that comes out of the YYZ when used in conjunction with the deep side. Both at subtle settings and more extreme distortion settings. It's a magical thing.
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If you push the character to 3 o'clock, back off the blend below noon and boost the bass a bit, you can make the VTDI sound a lot like the YYZ. I actually prefer it, and the YYZ is potentially on the chopping block!
 
#1,055
dannybuoy said:
If you push the character to 3 o'clock, back off the blend below noon and boost the bass a bit, you can make the VTDI sound a lot like the YYZ. I actually prefer it, and the YYZ is potentially on the chopping block!
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Well, too late. I already sold the VTDI. But I'll take your word for it, lol. I want to say you told me this a while ago in another thread, or maybe it was this one. I remember running home to try the suggested settings, but not liking them or finding it to be particularly Ged-like at all. But most of my experiences are tainted by - or at best seen through the lens of - using a headphone amp only and not an actual amp. I'm sure most things overdrive/dirstortion-related sound better through an actual amp than my studio headphones. Maybe your suggested settings would sound much better if I had access to my actual amp at the moment. But the YYZ I can tolerate well enough through headphones for some reason. Not in every setting, but in some. And it some it sounds just absolutely juicy. I find most of the sample settings in the manual to not sound good at all through headphones, but they provide a good starting point. The bi-amped distortion is by far my favorite. Though I rarely, if ever, would use that much gain in any real-world setting. But it sure is fun to jam with.
 
#1,056
jacoby75 said:
The bi-amped distortion is by far my favorite. Though I rarely, if ever, would use that much gain in any real-world setting. But it sure is fun to jam with.
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Funny. I didn't like that setting at all. I felt like there was too much separation between the two signals. Like they wouldn't go back together again after one was distorted that much and the other was not.
 
#1,057
scottfeldstein said:
Funny. I didn't like that setting at all. I felt like there was too much separation between the two signals. Like they wouldn't go back together again after one was distorted that much and the other was not.
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I can see that. But I think that's kind of the point. Like it's supposed to sound like it's coming from two amps. Maybe I'm way off there. I usually start from there and back the gain and mids down to about 3:00-4:00. Golden, grinding, drivey tone.
 
#1,058
Right now I'm finding that the sounds I like are the ones where the Drive and the Blend are both dialed in in relation to one another and that they're both at or near the noon position. After that, having the Tight button on and then dialing in a lot of Low to compensate for it. The highs get dialed way back, like 9 o'clock. The mids I can do at 3 or even totally cranked. It's pretty near the Roundabout setting.
 

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