• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

#2,801
projectapollo said:
Question...... Using the Origin DCX along with the Bassrig SV 1/4" out, how would you gain stage this pair? What order? I enjoy the DCX as an always-on tone shaper but have used it as an OD device, as well, to great effect. Passive basses with rounds, generally.
Click to expand...

Oh my, that's a complicated question.
Let's see.
In terms of how vicious the drive sits within a mix,
the DCX in EQ mode is harmless,
the Bassrig is a brawler
and the DCX in OD mode goes straight for groins, eyes and throats.

We've got a possible scenario where one of them is running always on and the other is used to provide more gain,
or both are off by default and used alone or in combo with the other, or both are always-on.

I'd say the more civil option is setting the DCX in EQ mode for a well manicured and touch responsive bit of dirt, which could be an always-on pedal and then the Bassrig as the second gain stage, not too bloodthirsty, but a solid amount of grit. When you need to strain your ears to hear the DXC's dirt contribution in a mix, the Bassrig will be less opaque.

The more in-your-(melting)-face option would be to flip the switch of the DCX to OD and then run the Bassrig as the always on pedal, with the drive knob just before noon - or wherever you need to run yours so you get some grind when you dig in. That's a clean sound that puts some hair on your chest - and bringing in the DCX to that escalates things to a nice and friendly kick in the teeth.
 
  • Like
Reactions: projectapollo and butterfingers1
#2,803
butterfingers1 said:
Besides more drive and distortion, do the Bassrigs add anything else to the DCX in terms of tone?
Click to expand...
Yes, tone.

The DCX, to my ear, is quite transparent, and the HF knob adds a bit of sparkle on top and more air, while the LF knob adds weight. These seem to be specifically chosen frequencies that do not impose a baked in tone on you, but much rather feel like using exactly what signal you provide and enhancing it, without changing its character much.
The Bassrig does have a lot more EQ to start with, especially the Super Vintage, and it does give you some baked in tone, too.
In short: When you're using the 1/4" output, then you get a three band (with ampeg-style mids with mid selector) before clipping and another two band after clipping, which Origin put there so you can shape your tone some more after you sent it to FOH via XLR out. The idea is to give the unknown backline amp a boost or cut to match your preferences without sending an overly bright or dull signal to FOH.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Shagnum, butterfingers1, projectapollo and 1 other person
#2,804
Spending another evening with the Dark Driving with the intent of getting to the bottom of what exactly it is that the tone knob does sums up as the following:

Looking for a manual, I found a document that seems to describe the V2 line of the Dark Driving, although it mentions the switches for the clipping diodes my unit lacks. In that document, the Tone knob gets a simple, generic sentence as its description. It's a tone knob. Fully CCW is full bass, turning CW yields more treble.
With careful listening and frequent adjusting of both the gain knob and the bright/mellow switch, I found that with the tone knob at fully CCW, there is indeed the most bass. In the mellow setting, actually too much for my liking. Turning up the knob I found a setting around 3 o'clock where the sound gains a little in what my ears would name the 1.5-2kHz range, and indeed sounds a bit brighter. There's still that weird void feeling from the treble.
Turning the knob even further kills the treble again, but I have the feeling that in this instance, the bass is not boosted like on the other end of the dial.
On top of that, there will be more distorted low end with the knob fully CCW.
Here's my best explanation. My ears tell me that the tone knob is somewhat of a mix of the Nature knob on the Blueberry, that knob that regulates how much low end gets fed into the clipping stage, and a tilt EQ on crack. I know the tilt EQ on the BDPG, and while that one is "All the way to the left is bass boosted and muffled, all the way to the right is bass cut and trebly", it's not linear and does a few things more than that, even in the middle position.
It could very well be that my ears deceive me on this.
It might also be that the EQ is pre clipping and that turning that knob to the left actually boosts the bass and that this leads to heavier clipping of low frequencies. It's hard to tell for me, though. There is a range on that knob where I get the feeling that not much happens apart from the low end getting more (or less) distorted.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GrowlerBox
#2,805
I did re-open a sidequest of mine. The hunt for the perfect chorus pedal is on again.

The purchase of the Analogman did scratch the itch for a while, but there is a simple problem with that design. It hisses like a mother. A mother snake, that is. An agitated one. In the synth chain, there's no problem with that, there's enough noise going on to hide the hiss - but whenever I want to pick chords, with a big roomy reverb slapped on top, the hiss really gets annoying.
So this is on its way now:
EFX.jpg
 
  • Like
Reactions: GrowlerBox and davelowell2
#2,806
el murdoque said:
I did re-open a sidequest of mine. The hunt for the perfect chorus pedal is on again.

The purchase of the Analogman did scratch the itch for a while, but there is a simple problem with that design. It hisses like a mother. A mother snake, that is. An agitated one. In the synth chain, there's no problem with that, there's enough noise going on to hide the hiss - but whenever I want to pick chords, with a big roomy reverb slapped on top, the hiss really gets annoying.
So this is on its way now:
View attachment 7352200
Click to expand...
I have that chorus (and their other two pedals). It’s beautiful. No noise, can take any signal. There’s a lot to be found in the Resonance control. I’ve been thinking about univibe a bit lately, and while I’ll probably end up with one (the Thorpy FX ER-2 has caught my eye), this can do a passable imitation. There’s nothing quite like a bulb-photocell array, it seems, but if you squint, lots of depth, lots of resonance and the triangle wave form will get the job done.

Ignore the ramble, that’s not why anyone should buy this. It’s just a great chorus. With a cool LED display.
 
  • Like
Reactions: el murdoque
#2,807
el murdoque said:
The hunt for the perfect chorus pedal is on again.
Click to expand...
I have dabbled in that rabbit hole.
My Anadime is almost the best I’ve tried.
The best I’ve heard tone wise is hidden in the SA Artifakt (along with all the other stuff it does) so so good, and the ability to high pass the signal - (I don’t like my fundamental wobbling as I keep thinking I’m out of tune!)
My issue is I like the artifakt and pf101 and don’t really want to sell them to spare up the cash and board space for the artifakt
 
#2,809
An update that noone was waiting for: I just hit “gimme” on a univibe, apparently one of the better clones of the original Shin-ei Uni-vibe, the Sixties Vibe by MJM. It satisfies all the cork-sniffer’s prejudices by being fully handwired and through-hole (with evidentiary photographs from the vendor) and glass-sealed photocells, etc, all of which I’m assuming makes a massive difference 😉.

The purchase has inspired me to drag out my old EHX Flanger Hoax (the hoax being that it’s really more of a phaser, although some jet-tones can be found in it). It’s a crazy pedal. It will do the Small Stone thing, at only about six times the size and on centre-positive 18 V, but every imaginable parameter is controllable via nine knobs and four toggles (plus on-off, which is handy), and it will do everything up to and including wild feedback radio noises. Fortunately, it has a blend control, so much of it is actually usable, as long as you use it when you come across it, because it’s a bugger trying to find the same sound twice. That, and its size (I think it would win a Sumo match against the Meatsmoke) make it more of a plaything than a serious piece of gear, but that’s what I’m all about these days.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Shagnum
#2,810
GrowlerBox said:
An update that noone was waiting for: I just hit “gimme” on a univibe, apparently one of the better clones of the original Shin-ei Uni-vibe, the Sixties Vibe by MJM. It satisfies all the cork-sniffer’s prejudices by being fully handwired and through-hole (with evidentiary photographs from the vendor) and glass-sealed photocells, etc, all of which I’m assuming makes a massive difference 😉.

The purchase has inspired me to drag out my old EHX Flanger Hoax (the hoax being that it’s really more of a phaser, although some jet-tones can be found in it). It’s a crazy pedal. It will do the Small Stone thing, at only about six times the size and on centre-positive 18 V, but every imaginable parameter is controllable via nine knobs and four toggles (plus on-off, which is handy), and it will do everything up to and including wild feedback radio noises. Fortunately, it has a blend control, so much of it is actually usable, as long as you use it when you come across it, because it’s a bugger trying to find the same sound twice. That, and its size (I think it would win a Sumo match against the Meatsmoke) make it more of a plaything than a serious piece of gear, but that’s what I’m all about these days.
Click to expand...
Wait, what? The MJM Sixties Vibe is a two or three knob pedal according to my friends at google.
Which one did you buy now?
 
#2,811
There is a Providence on the second hand market. I did order the Echo Fix Chorus through Thomann and it is a B stock (so it was bought and returned before), so I don't have an ethics problem with returning it, the good people at Thomann did do a lot of good business with me this year.
I know that I started a Chorus thread once and the Providence Anadime was mentioned in every second post. I looked at it and decided it's too boring.
Not much to look at, no really fancy name, and you can buy it from stores no problem - it's not even prohibitly expensive.

Well, looking at my Analogman and the Anadime, they seem very similar. Since my Analogman is decked out with all the options, it has top jacks, a deep switch and a mix knob, all of which can be found on the Providence, too.
Googling what drives the pedals, it's Bucket Brigade Chips. Analogman specifies that they use the MN3007 which was used in the original EHX Small Stone, and they used NOS chips. Does this create the hiss? Is the Anadime a hiss-less version of the Analogman, maybe?
 
#2,813
el murdoque said:
There is a Providence on the second hand market. I did order the Echo Fix Chorus through Thomann and it is a B stock (so it was bought and returned before), so I don't have an ethics problem with returning it, the good people at Thomann did do a lot of good business with me this year.
I know that I started a Chorus thread once and the Providence Anadime was mentioned in every second post. I looked at it and decided it's too boring.
Not much to look at, no really fancy name, and you can buy it from stores no problem - it's not even prohibitly expensive.

Well, looking at my Analogman and the Anadime, they seem very similar. Since my Analogman is decked out with all the options, it has top jacks, a deep switch and a mix knob, all of which can be found on the Providence, too.
Googling what drives the pedals, it's Bucket Brigade Chips. Analogman specifies that they use the MN3007 which was used in the original EHX Small Stone, and they used NOS chips. Does this create the hiss? Is the Anadime a hiss-less version of the Analogman, maybe?
Click to expand...
All bucket-brigade delay chips and their corresponding circuitry will make noise, it’s how the circuit around it is designed that affects how much of that noise makes it out relative to the signal you want to hear.

I have an Analogman Chorus with all the fixings as well and while it certainly has noise I don’t find it offensive- I do place it after all my gain devices though, so if you have a gain device after it you will be boosting/compressing that noise (ditto anything boosting treble after).

The Analogman Chorus is based on the EHX Small Clone, and EHX choruses in general tend to be known for their cutting and bright sound relative to many other chorus options, and also often known for their relatively high noise (see EHX Clone Theory!). Part of the noise from these designs is “clock” noise, which is basically the sound of a pulse that feeds the BBD chips to determine the delay time that is often at a frequency in the audio range and leaks into the signal. The longer the delay time, the slower that pulse, and the more audible it can be without adequate filtering at the output to remove it. In the Analogman Chorus with “Depth”, the Depth switch is changing the delay time of the BBD and the deepest settings will also be the noisiest as a result. Other noise from BBDs is aliasing noise- BBDs are relatively lo-fi samplers, and like any sample-rate reduction there is high-frequency noise that comes as a result (and again it gets worse the longer the delay time as you are decreasing the sample quality the longer the sample). With the clock noise, I suspect Analogman/EHX tuned their filters for a specific clock frequency and switching the Depth drops the clock frequency low enough to hear more of that clock noise (plus the lower-fidelity of the repeats and subsequent noise). I would think the Providence with Depth switch would have the same issue- a filter chosen for one clock setting wouldn’t be ideal for another, unless they just started with an overall darker filtered sound to begin with. I actually tend to use the 2nd highest depth setting on my Analogman most of the time, so also somewhat less noisy- the noise definitely increases with the Depth.


I think the EHX/Analogman essentially use a Dolby-style pre-emphasis/de-emphasis filtering circuit, boosting highs into the BBD and decreasing them after. Some choruses (but not the EHX or Analogman from my understanding) also use a compander circuit (compressing the signal before the BBD, expanding it after), and some add straight LP filtering to the output without the pre-emphasis (resulting in a darker overall tone).
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: OnlyFlats, el murdoque and GrowlerBox
#2,814
el murdoque said:
Wait, what? The MJM Sixties Vibe is a two or three knob pedal according to my friends at google.
Which one did you buy now?
Click to expand...
The three dial, one toggle, one footswitch model, blue paintjob but smaller than the enclosure which first had this colour. The enclosures and paint jobs have changed quite a bit over the years. As far as I can tell, this style is from eight or nine years ago. If you’re interested, I can post some pictures when I have it; I don’t seem to be able to upload the ones from the auction site without including the whole listing, all my details included.
 
Last edited:
#2,817
el murdoque said:
Well, looking at my Analogman and the Anadime, they seem very similar. Since my Analogman is decked out with all the options, it has top jacks, a deep switch and a mix knob, all of which can be found on the Providence, too.
Click to expand...
Providence has no mix knobs (or top jacks)
rate, depth and HPF frequency… and the switch that gives three variations of chorus type …
The HPF is what I realised I need on a chorus.

It may not be exciting or stereo, but it is very very good at what it does as a bass chorus.
 
  • Like
Reactions: s_wood
#2,818
Luke the Fluke said:
Providence has no mix knobs (or top jacks)
rate, depth and HPF frequency… and the switch that gives three variations of chorus type …
The HPF is what I realised I need on a chorus.

It may not be exciting or stereo, but it is very very good at what it does as a bass chorus.
Click to expand...
hpf.jpgmix.jpgtwoknob.jpg


I see there are several versions - but I suppose everyone here is talking about the Bass Chorus?
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back