Side Jack on the tuner may have taken up more room in reality than allotted for on the mock up.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
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 preamp bender: A Journal.
- Thread starter el murdoque
- Start date
Side Jack on the tuner may have taken up more room in reality than allotted for on the mock up.
Both may be true. I left a little room between the pedals to compensate for that and it seems I was right doing so.
The Pitchblack XS is a lot bigger than I anticipated - it is also very tall.
But the huge screen is quite bright and for a pedal that only takes up half a pedal space, it is surprisingly comfortable to use.
I got bored.
So I bought a HX Stomp.
Should arrive late this week.
Anyone here know if there's some kind of must have patches collection?
So I bought a HX Stomp.
Should arrive late this week.
Anyone here know if there's some kind of must have patches collection?
I know a good amount of folks will say this, but the Ian Allison IMA preset packs are a good starting point, but cost extra (from his site I believe). I've had the stomp for like 6 years, and it has gone on and off the board many times, but those presets are a good starting point and have been really helpful. Other than that, start simple with a blank patch, maybe just an svt bright without the cab if you're using an amp (you'll have to delete one of the presets on the stomp to start with blank slate).
you won't need that studio one then....
Jon Wilis has a Facebook group where he regularly posts things for free... Log into Facebook or his older settings are here Link Removed
my tip is start with getting one of his "flat" amp settings and setting it as the default on any amp blocks you want to use... they all seem to have way way more gain than you need.
Also some of the fender guitar amps sound great.
I should be more precise, I realize.
Synth bass.
I've seen Janek Gwizlina in a podcast thing with that guy that often hangs out with Scott from SBL. They talked about HX Stomp presets and did some serious synth business that sounded agreeable to my ear.
I think if I could make the Stomp do some credible modulation sounds, it could throw the Mobius off my board.
Then I'd only need it to cast off the C4, too. On top of synth duty, I also have a patch on the C4 that just routes the clean signal to the output and the output volume is controlled via MIDI expression pedal. Thepoor rich man's volume swell tool when you use a Jazz and have two volume knobs on the bass.
I am pretty sure that all this would work for me, depending on the quality of the filters on the Stomp.
Synth bass.
I've seen Janek Gwizlina in a podcast thing with that guy that often hangs out with Scott from SBL. They talked about HX Stomp presets and did some serious synth business that sounded agreeable to my ear.
I think if I could make the Stomp do some credible modulation sounds, it could throw the Mobius off my board.
Then I'd only need it to cast off the C4, too. On top of synth duty, I also have a patch on the C4 that just routes the clean signal to the output and the output volume is controlled via MIDI expression pedal. The
I am pretty sure that all this would work for me, depending on the quality of the filters on the Stomp.
you won't need that studio one then....
Nope. I will keep that small board as is. It's turned out great and I really like the fact that there is a very limited number of knobs to twist!
Connecting the dots for you Mr. Jounalist. Ian Allison IS the guy that hangs out with Scott from SBL.
Hm. The HX Stomp is not so hard to program that one would have to shell out *cough cough* $49 for four presets.
Fun story:
Having received my HX as a second hand unit for a very good price, I was a bit worried if everything was fine with it. At this price point, one could suspect foul play. When I started tinkering, some sub menus would keep popping up unbidden. I could not make sense of it.
I resetted it, tried other things, but it would keep happening.
However, I kept on trying to make things happen until I reached the point where I tried to find out how to assign the foot switches.
Turns out that you can send commands by merely touching the foot switch without pressing it.
I repeatedly touched one of the switches with my palm when tinkering with the knobs and buttons and called up that context menu. Let's see how many stupid user mistakes are in there for me yet to collect.
Fun story:
Having received my HX as a second hand unit for a very good price, I was a bit worried if everything was fine with it. At this price point, one could suspect foul play. When I started tinkering, some sub menus would keep popping up unbidden. I could not make sense of it.
I resetted it, tried other things, but it would keep happening.
However, I kept on trying to make things happen until I reached the point where I tried to find out how to assign the foot switches.
Turns out that you can send commands by merely touching the foot switch without pressing it.
I repeatedly touched one of the switches with my palm when tinkering with the knobs and buttons and called up that context menu. Let's see how many stupid user mistakes are in there for me yet to collect.
The first thing I tried on the HX Stomp, now that I got a hang on how it works is to recreate something like my big board. The things I aimed for were:
1. The basic clean sound. On my big board, the always on effects are Cali76CB into Broughton RFE into Strymon Big Sky into Noble.
The Noble was the easiest thing, since it's right there. First thought: It's good for what it is - which is a $600 digital multi pretending to be a $1200 tube box. It does not really give you the three dimensional sound Noble owners rave about, but it gets you rich, warm lows and pearly highs, even though not as organic and shiny and lush as the original does. Instead of the RFE I used a HPF/LPF and a parametric EQ set to boost a little at 580Hz.
Since there is no Cali and I could not discover an 1176 either, I went for the LA-2A as a comp, set to limiter, which works fine. In my clean sound, the Strymon adds just a little touch of plate reverb, and I did that with the Line6 plate reverb.
The result was a sound I could absolutely gig with. Which is stunning. As long as you don't A/B it to my big board, that is - if you do so, you realize that there's just a little bit of something missing on each instance, and all the little bits add up in the grand total - but that was to be expected.
2. I went on to add a drive, and settled on the Nobels after a bit of experimentation. In my ear, the digital version of the pedal sounds a bit less organic and a bit muffled, the highs don't come through as they did on my Nobels ODR-1, I also perceived a bit of low end missing, which I countered with a slight level boost. The breakup is nice and touch sensitive, though.
3. I frequently use a bigger sounding reverb for ambient picking and toyed around with several versions in the HX, but have yet to find one that does what I want. On the Big Sky it's the other way round - many of the verbs in there sound great and I have to pick one. I can say that this is a bit of a weakness here. I own the Big Sky, Blue Sky v1 and Cloudburst and prefer any of those to anything the HX has to offer.
4. To further emphasize on the ambient thing, I also added a chorus. I went with the tri chorus after trying without much success to get the Dimension working without cutting too much low end. Again, it's fine, but the Mobius feels a bit more luxurious on the ears.
I don't see the HX Stomp as a replacement for my Schmidt Array, though.
I would like to see it as an addition. The best case scenario would be that I can make it do proper synth sounds and modulation effects, because then I'd be able to take off the Mobius and the C4 (plus Neuro Hub), and come out with more possibilities from less pedals. This will take a while, though.
1. The basic clean sound. On my big board, the always on effects are Cali76CB into Broughton RFE into Strymon Big Sky into Noble.
The Noble was the easiest thing, since it's right there. First thought: It's good for what it is - which is a $600 digital multi pretending to be a $1200 tube box. It does not really give you the three dimensional sound Noble owners rave about, but it gets you rich, warm lows and pearly highs, even though not as organic and shiny and lush as the original does. Instead of the RFE I used a HPF/LPF and a parametric EQ set to boost a little at 580Hz.
Since there is no Cali and I could not discover an 1176 either, I went for the LA-2A as a comp, set to limiter, which works fine. In my clean sound, the Strymon adds just a little touch of plate reverb, and I did that with the Line6 plate reverb.
The result was a sound I could absolutely gig with. Which is stunning. As long as you don't A/B it to my big board, that is - if you do so, you realize that there's just a little bit of something missing on each instance, and all the little bits add up in the grand total - but that was to be expected.
2. I went on to add a drive, and settled on the Nobels after a bit of experimentation. In my ear, the digital version of the pedal sounds a bit less organic and a bit muffled, the highs don't come through as they did on my Nobels ODR-1, I also perceived a bit of low end missing, which I countered with a slight level boost. The breakup is nice and touch sensitive, though.
3. I frequently use a bigger sounding reverb for ambient picking and toyed around with several versions in the HX, but have yet to find one that does what I want. On the Big Sky it's the other way round - many of the verbs in there sound great and I have to pick one. I can say that this is a bit of a weakness here. I own the Big Sky, Blue Sky v1 and Cloudburst and prefer any of those to anything the HX has to offer.
4. To further emphasize on the ambient thing, I also added a chorus. I went with the tri chorus after trying without much success to get the Dimension working without cutting too much low end. Again, it's fine, but the Mobius feels a bit more luxurious on the ears.
I don't see the HX Stomp as a replacement for my Schmidt Array, though.
I would like to see it as an addition. The best case scenario would be that I can make it do proper synth sounds and modulation effects, because then I'd be able to take off the Mobius and the C4 (plus Neuro Hub), and come out with more possibilities from less pedals. This will take a while, though.
Do you envisage many scenarios where bringing either your large, or Nano, board would prove too much trouble, and thus make the HX a useful alternative?
I do certainly appreciate your deep dive into the HX, and the reporting back, but as a man who is intent on drilling down into the subtlest of discrepancies b/w pedals, and a purveyor of all things analog, I'm surprised you'd be willing to forego all that for the sake of trimming down to just a single all-digital box.
I do certainly appreciate your deep dive into the HX, and the reporting back, but as a man who is intent on drilling down into the subtlest of discrepancies b/w pedals, and a purveyor of all things analog, I'm surprised you'd be willing to forego all that for the sake of trimming down to just a single all-digital box.
@sloppy_phil you need not worry.
I have been forth and back in the past, but for now my feet are firmly rooted in the 'stomp boxes' camp.
The HX Stomp is capable of creating a compete rig, but you don't need to do that.
However, it could be some kind of playground to create a digital version of several pedal chains - like comp, octave, fuzz, filter, chorus. My personal journey down that alley has never yielded a fool proof analog signal chain that really worked for me. I would sit on my stool, tweaking knobs to get the balance just right and when I brought that rig somewhere, moving one of the dozen knobs involved by the tiniest fraction would set the sound off and the careful calibration had to begin anew. My band mates don't really have the patience to let their bassist calibrate his signal chain for every practice or gig, so I abandoned that route and went with a C4.
Doing the same thing inside the HX might yield something that is more stable and actually usable.
Might also be that I find out digital multi FX stuff like that is simply not my way of doing things and I'll offload it again. We'll see.
I tried a bit with the synth stuff that is already in there, but did not yet find a sound I like, I will have to watch a few videos on that to get pointers.
I have been forth and back in the past, but for now my feet are firmly rooted in the 'stomp boxes' camp.
The HX Stomp is capable of creating a compete rig, but you don't need to do that.
However, it could be some kind of playground to create a digital version of several pedal chains - like comp, octave, fuzz, filter, chorus. My personal journey down that alley has never yielded a fool proof analog signal chain that really worked for me. I would sit on my stool, tweaking knobs to get the balance just right and when I brought that rig somewhere, moving one of the dozen knobs involved by the tiniest fraction would set the sound off and the careful calibration had to begin anew. My band mates don't really have the patience to let their bassist calibrate his signal chain for every practice or gig, so I abandoned that route and went with a C4.
Doing the same thing inside the HX might yield something that is more stable and actually usable.
Might also be that I find out digital multi FX stuff like that is simply not my way of doing things and I'll offload it again. We'll see.
I tried a bit with the synth stuff that is already in there, but did not yet find a sound I like, I will have to watch a few videos on that to get pointers.
Here's my final verdict on the HX Stomp:
It is a nice and handy tool, but absolutely not meant for me.
I had the same problems with it that I had with the Headrush board I owned before.
There are a ton of options available in the device, but to my ears and to my fingertips, they felt okay at best and more often than not, mediocre. I got, at the same time, a vast array of choice, but also a limitation.
Let me use an example: When I looked for a chorus, I found about seven in the different sub menus. A choice of seven is quite rich, but also ...
let's say you play a gig in five hours and you need a chorus. The city in which you are has one single music shop and you head there. They have 7 different pedals. Since you play tonight and need a chorus, you'll choose the one of the seven you like best - or dislike least.
Now if you had a gig in a month, you could hop on the internet, compare, make a shortlist, look for second hand deals and buy two or three pedals, shoot them out and flip those that you don't like.
If you are very lucky, both scenarios will give you the same pedal - but my guess is that this would be a rare thing. So with the HX, you pick one of the seven instead of THE one.
I'm totally willing to go the extra mile and try out every pedal for every spot on my pedal boards, so some digital approximation from a multi FX unit is not really cutting it for me.
It is a nice and handy tool, but absolutely not meant for me.
I had the same problems with it that I had with the Headrush board I owned before.
There are a ton of options available in the device, but to my ears and to my fingertips, they felt okay at best and more often than not, mediocre. I got, at the same time, a vast array of choice, but also a limitation.
Let me use an example: When I looked for a chorus, I found about seven in the different sub menus. A choice of seven is quite rich, but also ...
let's say you play a gig in five hours and you need a chorus. The city in which you are has one single music shop and you head there. They have 7 different pedals. Since you play tonight and need a chorus, you'll choose the one of the seven you like best - or dislike least.
Now if you had a gig in a month, you could hop on the internet, compare, make a shortlist, look for second hand deals and buy two or three pedals, shoot them out and flip those that you don't like.
If you are very lucky, both scenarios will give you the same pedal - but my guess is that this would be a rare thing. So with the HX, you pick one of the seven instead of THE one.
I'm totally willing to go the extra mile and try out every pedal for every spot on my pedal boards, so some digital approximation from a multi FX unit is not really cutting it for me.
...which is why I already sold it.
Let's move on to greener pastures.
UPS dropped something off just now.
I ran across one of these in the second hand market and offered to buy it, but the seller went with a trade o
ption instead, but it left me jonesing for one pretty hard. Then my enablers informed me that a new batch would drop soon - and to cut a long story short, I went completely overboard and got me one of these:
The Idea is to use it to replace both the LA-1A and the Cali76 on my middle board.
We'll see how that goes, and soon!
Let's move on to greener pastures.
UPS dropped something off just now.
I ran across one of these in the second hand market and offered to buy it, but the seller went with a trade o
ption instead, but it left me jonesing for one pretty hard. Then my enablers informed me that a new batch would drop soon - and to cut a long story short, I went completely overboard and got me one of these:
The Idea is to use it to replace both the LA-1A and the Cali76 on my middle board.
We'll see how that goes, and soon!
I have similar thoughts on the Stomp. While I decided a while back that I don't want or need a huge board (I am at 6 pedals max now), I don't want a multieffects to be all or most of my board. There are effects that I just don't use very often that it is nice to get to bring out, but with the multieffects, the important ones don't really do it for me, for the most part. I just don't like dealing with programming either. The HX One is the one I have kept and the only one that has worked for me and it just has a few useful things and lets me experiment with other things. The Stomps and other multieffects are too much and not enough at the same time, if that makes sense.
I told my people at work that I have an appointment with the doc and left early.
Here's what I thought I might be able to do:
Instead of using the LA-1A as a general tone sweetener and tube DI and the Cali76 as peak limiting compressor, my hope is to use the DLA-2A to do both jobs at once.
After an hour of playing, here are my first thoughts on this beautiful machine:
As you can see from the knob positions, I have to be careful with the gain knob. There is distortion - and not the creamy tube drive one might hope for, but the ugly farting of a circuit getting overpowered that is not designed to be redlined at all.
The VU meter is quite sexy and also a very nice optical aid to set the compression. On the back, there is one switch and one more knob, I have the switch set to peak limiting (higher compression ratio) and the knob is dimed, I think this is somewhat similar to the side chain HPF in the Cali - turn it up and the lows don't get compressed as hard.
Gain and Peak Reduction are interactive, and it took me a while to find a good balance.
Now if I were to compare the DLA-2A with the LA-1A alone, my vote would be easy. Hands down the DLA-2A.
It can do everything the LA-1A can do (minus the boost), has better metering, is also dead silent, but reacts way faster. The moment the compression kicks in feels like ... when the Cali drives a well sharpened blade through the signal peak, the DLA-2A places its hands on the signals shoulders and firmly knees it in the gut.
The LA-1A always felt too sluggish for the kind of compression I want.
The compression the DLA-2A gives me is round and smooth, but also firm. It's not squishy, but you can see squishy even on a cloudy day from where it stands.
But I did not set out to replace the LA-1A with the DLA-2A. I set out to replace the Cali as well.
And here things get tricky. Lacking a better description, I want to say the Cali sounds more snappy, which you can actually feel quite well in the upper frequency range, where the tube mojo of the DLA-2A rolls off the edges a little more thorough than I would have wanted. Or so I thought.
I stopped jumping wildly between the LA-1A+Cali and the DLA-2A and flipping basses along with it and played for longer stretches to let my ears and fingers get accustomed to what I was hearing. Playing a little longer, I really enjoyed what I was getting, and when I swapped again, going from DLA-2A to LA-1A+Cali got me that snappy response again, but also lost something that is much harder to describe. Imagine running custard through a milk foam thing on an espresso engine and then pouring it out. I don't think custard reacts the same as milk does, but for the sake of my description making sense, just stretch your fantasy muscles a bit and believe it does.
That stuff is what the DLA-2A does to your tone that the LA-1A and Cali do not.
So what is better - creamy custard foam or snappy response?
Here's what I thought I might be able to do:
Instead of using the LA-1A as a general tone sweetener and tube DI and the Cali76 as peak limiting compressor, my hope is to use the DLA-2A to do both jobs at once.
After an hour of playing, here are my first thoughts on this beautiful machine:
As you can see from the knob positions, I have to be careful with the gain knob. There is distortion - and not the creamy tube drive one might hope for, but the ugly farting of a circuit getting overpowered that is not designed to be redlined at all.
The VU meter is quite sexy and also a very nice optical aid to set the compression. On the back, there is one switch and one more knob, I have the switch set to peak limiting (higher compression ratio) and the knob is dimed, I think this is somewhat similar to the side chain HPF in the Cali - turn it up and the lows don't get compressed as hard.
Gain and Peak Reduction are interactive, and it took me a while to find a good balance.
Now if I were to compare the DLA-2A with the LA-1A alone, my vote would be easy. Hands down the DLA-2A.
It can do everything the LA-1A can do (minus the boost), has better metering, is also dead silent, but reacts way faster. The moment the compression kicks in feels like ... when the Cali drives a well sharpened blade through the signal peak, the DLA-2A places its hands on the signals shoulders and firmly knees it in the gut.
The LA-1A always felt too sluggish for the kind of compression I want.
The compression the DLA-2A gives me is round and smooth, but also firm. It's not squishy, but you can see squishy even on a cloudy day from where it stands.
But I did not set out to replace the LA-1A with the DLA-2A. I set out to replace the Cali as well.
And here things get tricky. Lacking a better description, I want to say the Cali sounds more snappy, which you can actually feel quite well in the upper frequency range, where the tube mojo of the DLA-2A rolls off the edges a little more thorough than I would have wanted. Or so I thought.
I stopped jumping wildly between the LA-1A+Cali and the DLA-2A and flipping basses along with it and played for longer stretches to let my ears and fingers get accustomed to what I was hearing. Playing a little longer, I really enjoyed what I was getting, and when I swapped again, going from DLA-2A to LA-1A+Cali got me that snappy response again, but also lost something that is much harder to describe. Imagine running custard through a milk foam thing on an espresso engine and then pouring it out. I don't think custard reacts the same as milk does, but for the sake of my description making sense, just stretch your fantasy muscles a bit and believe it does.
That stuff is what the DLA-2A does to your tone that the LA-1A and Cali do not.
So what is better - creamy custard foam or snappy response?
