My Dirt Bender - Another Jounal

[el murdoque]

Just a side note for those that are interested:
In my metal band, we agreed to not doing different tunings for different songs, and decided to play everything in D standard.
I tuned down my P bass and while the Chromes on there did work, they felt more like TIs with the lower tuning.
I am very reluctant to change out worn in flats since it's so much work until the bass sounds just right again, but I finally took the plunge. Looking for something with heavy scale, I picked the one famous flatwound player in 80s metal - Steve Harris and his Rotosound SH-77 set with four bridge cables going from .050 to .110.

Just from a string tension viewpoint, It was absolutely the right choice. I doubt I would enjoy playing these in E, but a full step lower the tension feels perfect - especially those riffs where you play the open string with hammer on and pull off licks feel so much more lively.
Also, being mainly a reggae bassist for such a long time, my shredding speed is not what it used to be when I was 19, and having more tension certainly helps a lot.

Sound wise I can only report that these sound like fresh flats. There is a metallic ring to them that will hopefully dull down over time.
In terms of feeling, they are terrible. The D string feels a lot smoother than the others and especially the E and A strings feel like rounds and they also have a lot of finger noise. I know that I had the same issues with any flat I put on a bass that was not a TI or LaBella - and a few weeks (or months) in, the Optimas, Chromes and Pyramids were smooth, so I hope I'll see the same thing with the Rotos.

I'm not super excited that I'm sporting the colors of some obscure football team from London on my silks and ball ends, but I doubt that outside of London, many people will recognize that.

 

[sloppy_phil]

Lettuce know how it fares in a mix!
My main gripe with fuzz type pedals that run a clean blend is that when playing with distorted guitars, the sizzle often gets lost between the cymbals and the guitar harmonics.
I fondly remember the bedroom tone I could get with the OBNE Haunt Fuzz. You could dial in a super mean steampowered hacksaw, but then dial back on the blend to get a lot of clean signal in. The result was a terrific sound when solo playing but with a band, there was zero difference between the pedal on or off in the room mix.

Perhaps I have just played the wrong fuzz pedals over the years, but this has largely been my experience with every single one of them as well, and the main reason I've never managed to keep a fuzz pedal on my board. Including the much-venerated Doom 2, which for me suffered greatly from having a cut-only treble knob. No ability to increase how much bite the signal had meant I couldn't use it practically in a full band mix.

Hopefully @GrowlerBox has discovered a good 'un over there!

 

[Teryup]

It must be because I have never been in a band with a particularly dense frequency mix and the guitarists I play with rarely go more distorted than a tubescreamer, but I have never experienced the disappearing fuzz trick. It sounds awful.

 

[sunbeast]

It must be because I have never been in a band with a particularly dense frequency mix and the guitarists I play with rarely go more distorted than a tubescreamer, but I have never experienced the disappearing fuzz trick. It sounds awful.

Yeah bass fuzz sounds killer under cleaner guitars! In a more dense mix with a lot more distortion happening it can definitely get lost (and compress the bass too much, actually losing punch in the process).

 

[GrowlerBox]

Perhaps I have just played the wrong fuzz pedals over the years, but this has largely been my experience with every single one of them as well, and the main reason I've never managed to keep a fuzz pedal on my board. Including the much-venerated Doom 2, which for me suffered greatly from having a cut-only treble knob. No ability to increase how much bite the signal had meant I couldn't use it practically in a full band mix.

Hopefully @GrowlerBox has discovered a good 'un over there!

I can see that happening. I’ve never played a fuzz live; when I was doing that sort of thing most weekends (that’s probably been 12 years now, jeez …), it was on upright and EUB. I would play a few things quite overdriven on the EUB, but never had a fuzz in those days. Right now, my only live “mix” is as the only amplified instrument in a room full of acoustic guitars, mandolins, violins and a banjo in a jam group. We have a surprisingly eclectic playlist, but it’s pretty light on the metal . My primary use case at the moment, therefore, is as a particular flavour of saturation rather than wallpaper-peeling, face-melting doomstortion, although it’s a fun party trick. I won’t know how it fares in that role until next weekend, but in the meantime, I can play pretty loud in my house in a recorded mix, including through studio monitors, so that might provide some indication.

 

[GrowlerBox]

Just a side note for those that are interested:
In my metal band, we agreed to not doing different tunings for different songs, and decided to play everything in D standard.
I tuned down my P bass and while the Chromes on there did work, they felt more like TIs with the lower tuning.
I am very reluctant to change out worn in flats since it's so much work until the bass sounds just right again, but I finally took the plunge. Looking for something with heavy scale, I picked the one famous flatwound player in 80s metal - Steve Harris and his Rotosound SH-77 set with four bridge cables going from .050 to .110.

Just from a string tension viewpoint, It was absolutely the right choice. I doubt I would enjoy playing these in E, but a full step lower the tension feels perfect - especially those riffs where you play the open string with hammer on and pull off licks feel so much more lively.
Also, being mainly a reggae bassist for such a long time, my shredding speed is not what it used to be when I was 19, and having more tension certainly helps a lot.

Sound wise I can only report that these sound like fresh flats. There is a metallic ring to them that will hopefully dull down over time.
In terms of feeling, they are terrible. The D string feels a lot smoother than the others and especially the E and A strings feel like rounds and they also have a lot of finger noise. I know that I had the same issues with any flat I put on a bass that was not a TI or LaBella - and a few weeks (or months) in, the Optimas, Chromes and Pyramids were smooth, so I hope I'll see the same thing with the Rotos.

I'm not super excited that I'm sporting the colors of some obscure football team from London on my silks and ball ends, but I doubt that outside of London, many people will recognize that.

Have you tried the OG Jamerson Labellas downtuned? I haven’t, but it makes sense to me that they could work in that setting and have a better feel with less noise, at least. I have their LTFs on my fretless, which are clearly not what you want, but I liked them from day 1. Funny, I was a West Ham supporter in my youth, growing up in the UK.

 

[GrowlerBox]

One last thought before I must turn my attention elsewhere. This will be no news to any of my current interlocutors, but for anyone perusing this thread that is less experienced with dirt pedals and looking for some guidance, I would highly recommend having some form of EQ adjustment upstream of your dirt, particularly one with a mid-range control. Pushing mids into dirt makes for a much easier time with “cutting through”. A pretty obnoxious, “boxy” clean tone can be just the ticket when you put that into dirt, particularly at the grubbier end of the gain dial. That’s not always possible with older-style fuzzes (fuzzfaces, tone benders, etc) which don’t like have a buffered signal ahead of them, but even then, many newer versions, especially those built with use on bass in mind, have additional transformer-isolated circuits or “pickup emulators” built-in that allow them to be used further down the chain.

Anyhow, PSA over .

 

[el murdoque]

Have you tried the OG Jamerson Labellas downtuned? I haven't, but it makes sense to me that they could work in that setting and have a better feel with less noise, at least. I have their LTFs on my fretless, which are clearly not what you want, but I liked them from day 1. Funny, I was a West Ham supporter in my youth, growing up in the UK.

It was actually between those two sets. Either the LaBellas or the Rotosounds. Since I've had LaBellas on ... I think two basses now, and quite liked them, only ending up selling the bass was what got us to part ways. However, my ear told me that those strings tend to go a bit more mellow than Chromes or TIs.
While this is great for many things, it's not really what I'd prefer the bass for the metal band to be strung with. So I went for the unknown quantity and got a set of West Ham strings.

 

[Sugarbear08]

Just a side note for those that are interested:
In my metal band, we agreed to not doing different tunings for different songs, and decided to play everything in D standard.
I tuned down my P bass and while the Chromes on there did work, they felt more like TIs with the lower tuning.
I am very reluctant to change out worn in flats since it's so much work until the bass sounds just right again, but I finally took the plunge. Looking for something with heavy scale, I picked the one famous flatwound player in 80s metal - Steve Harris and his Rotosound SH-77 set with four bridge cables going from .050 to .110.

Just from a string tension viewpoint, It was absolutely the right choice. I doubt I would enjoy playing these in E, but a full step lower the tension feels perfect - especially those riffs where you play the open string with hammer on and pull off licks feel so much more lively.
Also, being mainly a reggae bassist for such a long time, my shredding speed is not what it used to be when I was 19, and having more tension certainly helps a lot.

Sound wise I can only report that these sound like fresh flats. There is a metallic ring to them that will hopefully dull down over time.
In terms of feeling, they are terrible. The D string feels a lot smoother than the others and especially the E and A strings feel like rounds and they also have a lot of finger noise. I know that I had the same issues with any flat I put on a bass that was not a TI or LaBella - and a few weeks (or months) in, the Optimas, Chromes and Pyramids were smooth, so I hope I'll see the same thing with the Rotos.

I'm not super excited that I'm sporting the colors of some obscure football team from London on my silks and ball ends, but I doubt that outside of London, many people will recognize that.

How delightful: An English football reference surfacing on this thread. I seriously doubt that you're going to suddenly have a bunch of people thinking you support West Ham United due your string choice. Steve Harris though... what a beast... one of my favorites, along with Geezer Butler and Cliff Burton.

 

[el murdoque]

How delightful: An English football reference surfacing on this thread. I seriously doubt that you're going to suddenly have a bunch of people thinking you support West Ham United due your string choice. Steve Harris though... what a beast... one of my favorites, along with Geezer Butler and Cliff Burton.

For football references, @sloppy_phil is the man to talk to. I'm not a football enjoyer myself - and if there was a team I support, it'd be St. Pauli. I lived a short walk from the stadium when I was younger.

And yeah, Mr. Harris is a beast.
When we started the metal band, every member got to pick one song we'd cover so we got some material to play while working on originals.
One of the guitarists picked Prowler by Iron Maiden. I'm very familiar with the Number of the Beast and the Fear of the Dark, but not so much with the pre-Dickinson era, so I nodded, went home, listened to the song and had a stroke.
Luckily, that guitarist realized that he can't handle being in a band with his current life schedule and quit, so the song got dropped.
Else, typing these lines would have taken a lot longer since

(I wanted to pick Angel City by Motörhead, but when I said I'm gonna pick Motörhead, the guys seemed so excited by Killed By Death that I picked that one instead)

And while I think that Cliff Burton is a bit overhyped these days, Metallica died along with him in September '86.

Geezer Butler is, I want to say, the biggest and only influence I ever had in metal. His tone and his playing style haunted me all through my youth.

 

[Ritter667]

For football references, @sloppy_phil is the man to talk to. I'm not a football enjoyer myself - and if there was a team I support, it'd be St. Pauli. I lived a short walk from the stadium when I was younger.

And yeah, Mr. Harris is a beast.
When we started the metal band, every member got to pick one song we'd cover so we got some material to play while working on originals.
One of the guitarists picked Prowler by Iron Maiden. I'm very familiar with the Number of the Beast and the Fear of the Dark, but not so much with the pre-Dickinson era, so I nodded, went home, listened to the song and had a stroke.
Luckily, that guitarist realized that he can't handle being in a band with his current life schedule and quit, so the song got dropped.
Else, typing these lines would have taken a lot longer since

(I wanted to pick Angel City by Motörhead, but when I said I'm gonna pick Motörhead, the guys seemed so excited by Killed By Death that I picked that one instead)

And while I think that Cliff Burton is a bit overhyped these days, Metallica died along with him in September '86.

Geezer Butler is, I want to say, the biggest and only influence I ever had in metal. His tone and his playing style haunted me all through my youth.

My biggest metal bass influence is without doubt Justin Chancellor.

What a tone, what an amount of absolute iconic bass riffs.

But although I like Iron Maiden a lot Steve Harris has never really been a big influence for me on bass, too far from how I like to play bass.

Lemmy, Geezer and Cliff I do have a love to though also.

Trevor Dunn too, from Mr. Bungle.

But that's also about the extend of metal bass players that I find inspiring.

 

[el murdoque]

Some more words on the Prince of Tone.

The three way switch is somewhat less effective of what I'm used to. I'd say if you set it to Distortion, you get about as much gain as a Tubescreamer has.
Set to OD, you get about half of that, and boost is again half. So you're going from a low gain overdrive to a somewhat lower gain overdrive to an even lower gain overdrive. I guess when you're sitting with your vintage or custom shop strat in front of your Dumble, you can enjoy the finer nuances of the tonal spectrum revealed through this. I would go on and crack disrespecting jokes towards the players of the six string octave up bass guitar and their search for the perfect tones, but then I have a look at my pedal collection and shut up.
Or do I?
Let's establish that the PoT is probably a great pedal and I am doing the equivalent of judging a Bugatti Veyron for its qualities of dragging a tree stump from the earth, then proceeding to laugh at it because the 16.4 has 1001 horse power, but cannot do that while a Porsche Diesel A 133 can totally manage tree stumps with its meager 32 horsepower. Put both on a track and the Bugatti smokes the Porsche in any way imaginable, since the A 133 has a top speed of 28kph.
But we're the bass playing folk. We are simple people. We use our gear to pull tree stumps, and we laugh at gear that gets stuck in the mud, even if it is able to perform magnificently in other disciplines.

So having a switch to go from a hint of drive to two hints of drive to three hints of drive, when being used to switches like on the Subspace or the MBD-2, where a solid +20dB are applied and you go from slightly driven to booyaka! Ouch ouch, my ears are bleeding! .... well, let's say the Guitar folk might wonder why the Porsche A 133 has five forward gears when its top speed is less than a third of what a Veyron reaches in first gear.

But if we're completely honest here, I must say that even when I hooked up the Broughton FFXL and toyed around with the filters until I had the balance just right, It was still incredibly boring to use the PoT. That setup took care of the main issue and the lows were back. Now I'm using two expensive pedals to achieve a goal of ... a bland sound. Imagine Gordon Ramsay tasting a dish, looking disappointed, slightly shaking his head and then just leaving the room without a word.

I'm torn between:

A) My mechanical keyboard has switches that have a lifespan of 50 million keystrokes each. Every sentence written about this thing is wasting what precious little they have left.

B) Someone who makes fun of a pedal such as this is someone who pushes a person in a wheelchair down a set of stairs and laughs at them bouncing about. I don't want to be that someone.

 

[OldShark]

For such a boring pedal, I highly appreciate the — fully expected — non-boring and figurative treatment...
But what a moral conflict!

 

[el murdoque]

Next up:

EHX Bass Soul Food or Markbass Distorsore ?

 

[Parzival]

Distorsore looks way more interesting. Not very pedalboard friendly though.

 

[gillento]

Soulfood, please.

 

[sloppy_phil]

Next up:

EHX Bass Soul Food or Markbass Distorsore ?

 

[el murdoque]

Soul Food: II
Distorsore: II

Any more votes?

 

[el murdoque]

View attachment 7187777

La plata.

 

[Giff]

I didn't purchase this drive pedal necessarily with the intention that I would use it for bass, but I'll be damned if it doesn't sound great for bass as well as guitar! It is a DCW Jam Ray Deluxe pedal. DCW is clone maker, and they have a shop on Reverb. This is a Jan Ray clone, which is a clone of a Timmy with minor tweaks* *this is my impression from information that I have gleaned from the interwebs.* anyway, I don't sense much low end loss (if any), but you can see I'm running it almost wide open. It isn't quite fuzz territory, but I would characterize it as high-gain. Part of the reason for this is its location in my chain. I have it placed after compressor and preamp(s). So it gets hit with a decent signal. I use it as a lead-tone for guitar as well. The boost can be set slightly dirty, and it sounds superb as well. For lower-gain, I have a Trickfish Preamp Overdrive just after my tuner at the front. I also run the Q-Strip at the end to add at eq points I love. Good stuff!!!