HPF showdown

[bassicsax]

I’m looking at adding an always on HPF under one of my boards. I am mainly looking at the micro thumpinator, Broughton always on HPF, and the FDeck HPF. If you have had these which did you prefer and why? I am leaning towards the Thumpinator at the moment...

 

[Stumbo]

I’m looking at adding an always on HPF under one of my boards. I am mainly looking at the micro thumpinator, Broughton always on HPF, and the FDeck HPF. If you have had these which did you prefer and why? I am leaning towards the Thumpinator at the moment...

The Thumpinator is fixed always-on. It will help protect your speakers to a degree but It won't help you dial in an acoustically challenging stage or venue or allow you to set the HPF near the tuning frequency of a ported cab.

I purchased the adjustable Broughton always-on. Tiny, easy to place, not an "effect" so no footswitch needed. Easily Cuts the boom and mud. Also allows you to turn up your bass tone control, more like a low mid.

I'm now considering an adjustable Bro-ton HPF/LPF because it does the same for the highs. It dials out the extra crispy clanky highs and allows you to smooth out your treble with your tone control. It has a boost control and footswitch if you need it.

Some effects users have the separate HPF and LPF and place them where they're most beneficial for certain types of effects.

I've read that first is your tuner, then a HFP/LPF in front of compressors and/or octave to cut the sub-sonic lows that can trigger frequency anomalies and for the, LPF, it cuts the fizz out of distortion pedals. Then an HPF is set at the end to make sure what is being sent to the amp is clean of any extraneous sub-sonic lows and may be set at a different level than the HPF/LPF because its purpose is to tame cabinet/stage/venue boom.

fdeck's is a HPF only, has a volume control, phase switch and can run on batteries too. Works for upright bass and electric bass.

Both units are popular and well thought of on TB.

 

[chadhargis]

Did a little playing with my microThumpinator. The clip below is a clip of a simple riff on my Dingwall Combustion 5 which is A (5th fret E string) - E (5th fret B string) - D (3rd fret B string) - C (1st fret B string).

The first two times through is WITHOUT the microThumpinator. The last two times is with it. You will hear that the A sounds about the same both times, but when I'm start using the lower notes there is a VAST difference. The Thumpinator riff has LOADS more clean bottom end. No other effects were used. I used a TC Electronics Ditto looper to do the recording so the dynamics would be the same for both. All I did was engage the Thumpinator using a FX loop pedal.

Signal path is:

Dingwall Combustion 5 --> microThumpinator --> Shift Line Olympic IIIs Preamp/DI --> Allen & Heath ZEDi10 mixer --> GarageBand (no plugins or effects).

 

[Jim C]

For those with both the F'Deck and the Broughton:
Does the F'Deck work / sound better since it has a 2nd filter pre-set at 35 Hz.?

I love my HP3 but it's an odd shape, afraid the pots will get bent, and I would rather not have a volume knob.
For that matter, I wish the freq. select was harder to turn/bump.
Yes, I usually set mine exactly the same way.

 

[RadioactiveGuy4]

I'm a big fan of the fDeck HPF3. I used it on my board for years. I upgraded my set up to a HX stomp so I'm not currently using it right now but I keep it as a back up.

As a High Pass Filter its great! The ability to adjust the second filter is where the magic is and it has help me tame some excessively muddy stages in the past.

That being said it does have one design aspect that I didn't care for. Mainly the way the jacks were mounted backwards from how I would normally prefer them.

Other than that its a great pedal for a great price and its built like a tank. I used my on countless shows and never had an issue.

 

[Feral Feline]

That's the way to do a demo, chadhargis, thanks for sharing.


For under the board, FDeck III, for sure. Slim and the knobs stick out to the side.


On top, I'd like to cop a Broughton, or a Schalltechnik_04 Vong-Filterung.

I've always liked the Thumpinator, but the FDeck suited my needs better when it came time to purchase and Broughton wasn't making pedals at the time.



Pros (all high quality):
Thumpinator's compact, goes under the board and settings can't be bumped.
Slim form factor of the FDeck makes for easy underboard mounting and you get some adjustability. Francis made the schematic open source...
Broughton has the best adjustability and is ideal for on top of any board, plus you'd be supporting a great Canuck.


Cons:
No settings to adjust on the Thumper, if needed.
FDeck's form factor not so great for on top of a pedalboard.
Form factor of the Broughton not so ideal for under-the-board, depending on the board.


Get the one that best suits your needs, can't go wrong with whichever one does that for you.

 

[aledeville]

I like the simplicity of the MicroThumpinator, but see the appeal of the others. No bad choice in either of these I assume.

 

[Zbysek]

Get variable HPF. Both Broughton and FDeck great units.

I have Broughton HPF DI.

 

[PawleeP]

Anyone know about how much an fdeck adjustable HPF costs? Where are they made? Appreciate it ya'llz.

 

[BurningSkies]

Anyone know about how much an fdeck adjustable HPF costs? Where are they made? Appreciate it ya'llz.

His weborder page says it's 100$ plus 8$ shipping. IIRC Francis lives in the United States, and he builds these by hand, they're not factory-built or out sourced.

Is this still correct @fdeck ?

 

[fdeck]

His weborder page says it's 100$ plus 8$ shipping. IIRC Francis lives in the United States, and he builds these by hand, they're not factory-built or out sourced.

Is this still correct @fdeck ?

Yup.

Link is in my sig.

 

[PawleeP]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed] Anyone know if this thing has an adjustable HPF that can be run without the overdrive kicked in?

 

[Al Kraft]

His weborder page says it's 100$ plus 8$ shipping. IIRC Francis lives in the United States, and he builds these by hand, they're not factory-built or out sourced.

Is this still correct @fdeck ?

Fdeck's HPF Pre Series 3 is a top notch design and the build quality is outstanding. I own two and there is one on my gig bag every time I leave the house. All the HPFs mentioned are high end and will work fine, but if the pedal board layout will accommodate this, it would be my first choice.

 

[BurningSkies]

Fdeck's HPF Pre Series 3 is a top notch design and the build quality is outstanding. I own two and there is one on my gig bag every time I leave the house. All the HPFs mentioned are high end and will work fine, but if the pedal board layout will accommodate this, it would be my first choice.

I have one tucked under my board that I've used since I received it. It's one of the original prototype units that was made. Dave Green (aka Greenboy) gave it to me as a wedding gift! I have taken the knobs off and replaced them with lockable knobs so I don't have to check it regularly...I also have a Broughton LPF under there (also with knobs changed) that I started running when I moved to IEMs and found that the extra treble I was hearing in my ears was distracting since it's not in my amp setup's output.

 

[Killing Floor]

HPF is a circuit that works or doesn’t. So as long as it isn’t broken the brand shouldn’t matter.

 

[Al Kraft]

It's one of the original prototype units that was made. Dave Green (aka Greenboy) gave it to me as a wedding gift!

Maybe it's because I'm an engineer but owning a prototype is just cool and every one has a story that makes it even more special.

 

[BurningSkies]

Maybe it's because I'm an engineer but owning a prototype is just cool and every one has a story that makes it even more special.

I'm a lover of limited and rarity items.

Yeah, this one sort of came to Dave during the dev. cycle for the original fEarful cabs. I was a fairly early adopter (Mine are slightly different than the ones finally codified and have different crossover/L-Pad networks in them where were gleaned with help from Dave and Charlie E.). When Francis was doing the protos he sent one out to Dave to try out. But in the long run Dave was using a fair amount of DSP and rack gear and he figured I could use it, given I was using multi-kilowatt amps and he was worried I'd start killing fEarfuls.

(note...to this day I've never killed a woofer in my cabs).

 

[BurningSkies]

HPF is a circuit that works or doesn’t. So as long as it isn’t broken the brand shouldn’t matter.

Yes, but they're not all the same. Different frequency points, different amounts of filtering per octave, etc.

 

[Killing Floor]

Yes, but they're not all the same. Different frequency points, different amounts of filtering per octave, etc.

I got you. The one I have is Broughton. I took it off my main board because my Mesa amps have one on board and 1 fewer pedal means I can buy another pedal. Math.

 

[Johno Dunn]

I voted for other, and my other is a Broughton HLPF. For my purposes, an LP is as important or more so than HP. You can eliminate string noise, and tame the worst of tweeters!