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Mxr bass synth sb301
- Thread starter drewphishesp
- Start date
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I’ve got 2 arriving tomorrow, so they are available… stock is selling out quickly so you’ll have to search around for available units.
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Hard to get in Canada that’s for sure. AFAIK, no one has had them in stock here since release. The country’s biggest retailer, L&M is only getting 100 units in a first order, I’m told, due to arrive end of August or beginning of September. I’ve plunked my dolla dolla bills down. Now, to wait…
Musician's Friend has a few in right now, "Less than 5 left."
I happened to get a MF birthday discount code that expires tomorrow. I've been checking multiple retailers almost daily the past month waiting for some to pop up. Perfect timing for them to get some MXR Bass Synth pedals in so I could use my birthday code!
Edit: that didn't last! I wonder if anyone here saw my message and was able to grab one.
I happened to get a MF birthday discount code that expires tomorrow. I've been checking multiple retailers almost daily the past month waiting for some to pop up. Perfect timing for them to get some MXR Bass Synth pedals in so I could use my birthday code!
Edit: that didn't last! I wonder if anyone here saw my message and was able to grab one.
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I asked IMA and MXR if they have all of the knob settings for the presets. IMA did not save them.
MXR also doesn't seem to have them in a way easy to share, but they were nice enough to re-create and share the settings for the green four preset Synthadelic (the Flashlight tone) since I asked about it. I thought I'd pass it along for those curious.
"The secondary parameters are all default except the VOICE MIX is slightly above 12 o’clock and the OUTPUT GAIN is slightly below 12 o’clock."
MXR also doesn't seem to have them in a way easy to share, but they were nice enough to re-create and share the settings for the green four preset Synthadelic (the Flashlight tone) since I asked about it. I thought I'd pass it along for those curious.
"The secondary parameters are all default except the VOICE MIX is slightly above 12 o’clock and the OUTPUT GAIN is slightly below 12 o’clock."
Now that this guy has been out for a while and people have had time to play with it, are there any big advantages to having one of these vs. what you can do with the HX Stomp?
I got myself a Stomp a few months ago, in part to have more synth options, and feel a lot of FOMO with everybody and their neighbor buying the MXR. But I also feel like I've barely scratched the surface of all the Stomp presets available out there.
I got myself a Stomp a few months ago, in part to have more synth options, and feel a lot of FOMO with everybody and their neighbor buying the MXR. But I also feel like I've barely scratched the surface of all the Stomp presets available out there.
I mean, can you get decent synth tones with the Stomp? Yes. I have the IMA Stomp presets and had to tweak a bit to make them usable for me.
The MXR presets, just work, for me. I’ll use these routed through my Stomp and Anagram as well… for $215, it’s worth it to me, as it was just plug and play and I didn’t have to tweak for what I needed.
I posted a review a couple days ago. I don't compare it to the HX Stomp, but maybe you or someone else in this thread will find it helpful.
It probably also depends on what you're wanting to do. If you perform live with a number of different synth sounds, I think the Stomp will work a lot better where you can more easily recall your new sound for each song. Sure, you can save presets on the MXR, but there are only eight slots. You are also going to have to write some detailed notes should you want to go re-create a sound you've made with the MXR.
If instead you think the MXR presets get you close enough for what synth stuff you want to play or if you prefer to tweak knobs to find a sound, the MXR is for you.
I’ve personally never been super impressed with the Stomp for actual synth waveform sounds, though some of the legacy synths do some cool stuff for sure and I’ve heard recordings of others getting useful sounds so I know they are in there if you are willing to invest the work. The IMA approach to synth in the Stomp (as well as a few other notable Stomp synth-bass users) is mostly based on analog pedal emulation- meaning octave into distortion into filter plus some modulation and other thickeners. You can definitely get great sounds that way if you limit your expectations (IE understand you are making synth-like sounds with the bass rather than dialing in actual synth waveforms), and the bonus is that tracking from that kind of approach is sometimes cleaner and more organic feeling than when using actual synth pedals/blocks which can be a little more unpredictable or harsh.
The MXR at its basis is a very simple/rudimentary mono synth using actual synth waveforms run into a filter and chorus. I think the star of the show for me in the MXR is the filter- none of the filters in the Stomp can get as punchy or thick IME and I think the MXR filter is up there with some of my other favorite synthy standalone pedal filters like the Moog or Chunk Agent Funk for really snappy synth filters. For slower envelope filter sweeps I am less immediately impressed, though I usually use expression pedals for those sorts of sweeps anyway and that works great on the MXR. The main weakness in the MXR is also one of its main attractions- relative lack of tweakability (at least relative to other dedicated synths like the C4 or Future Impact). You can’t mix different waveform shapes into one sound for example, or detune two unison waveforms (the onboard chorus stands in for that somewhat, good for more Juno type sounds but not the fatter detune of a Moog for example). There is still plenty to dial in, but there are obvious limitations to a fully hardware-tweakable synth with only 6 knobs (even if they all have secondary and even tertiary functions!).
The Stomp definitely has a lot more options for making synth sounds and fattening/widening them up but the basic sounds from the MXR just sound punchier/fatter to me and are generally easier to dial in because of the relative lack of options and the strong foundation of good waveforms and a great filter (harder to dial in bad sounds than any other dedicated synth pedal I’ve ever used). As above, I think it would be a nice addition to a Stomp if you like the general sorts of sounds you’ve heard in demos (I think the presets are a pretty good representation of the sorts of sounds the MXR does well), though if you are already getting good synth sounds from the Stomp that work for your needs then it certainly isn’t necessary to grab anything else.
The MXR is a synth, the Stomp is not. That’s where the comparisons between these two unrelated pedals should start and finish.
@sunbeast nailed it in the previous post.
@sunbeast nailed it in the previous post.
The Stomp does have actual tracking synth waveforms, all in the "Legacy" section of the Pitch/Synth effects section (they were also in the old M-series pedals). Some are pretty good sounding, some less so. I don't find any of the standalone synth models in the Stomp to be up to par with the MXR, but you do have a lot of room to tweak a larger effect chain to manipulate the sounds and you can even mix multiple synths using parallel pathways which is cool. I never paid the synths in the Stomp much mind with bass until I was introduced to the band Submotion Orchestra in the Stomp thread, and their bassist uses only a Helix (not a Stomp) with bass for synth sounds that he uses 100% of the time in that group on records and live (he did use some other pedals some of the time on earlier records, but went full Helix long ago) and IMO he sounds great. He uses a mix of one of the octaves in parallel with legacy synth models on top in different parts
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Now THAT was truly an “honest review.” Thanks for taking the time to dive into the pedal and to spell out your thoughts. For a guy like me who hates phones/tablets/computers to control my effects but wants a small form plug-and-play pedal to approximate some synth-like sounds and get just one step up from combining my octaver and envelope filter pedals, I think the MXR should work great. If I already had some synth pedals/effects or wanted an in-depth synth experience with the most accurate sounds and controls, I’d be looking for something else, probably at a much higher price point. My MXR arrives tomorrow and I’m looking forward to diving in. Thanks again, great review!
fwiw my main bass-synth pedal for the last ~25 years has been a Korg G5 ...which "only" has nine slots for presets. But over these past 2+ decades I've found that
A) having a modest number of preset slots is a boon, not an impediment; it makes it very easy to remember which preset gets which sound, and/or which preset works for which tune; and
B) the need for more than a small handful of different synth-bass sounds just doesn't seem to come up when playing music where the bass guitar is emulating a synthesizer playing a bassline.
So just because the Stomp has like 30 distortion models but isn’t technically a distortion pedal, I shouldn’t compare what it can do vs. a Bass Big Muff?
This is a mischaracterization of what @sunbeast said. Please reread the following:
