quite a few bassists in other forums I lurk are talking about serious bass cut. YMMV. Even guitarists starting to sour on it, calling it a bit shrill.
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Show me your compact pedalboard setup
- Thread starter garmenteros
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quite a few bassists in other forums I lurk are talking about serious bass cut. YMMV. Even guitarists starting to sour on it, calling it a bit shrill.
I will have to do some more investigation. It's always hard to tell bass-cut from YouTube demos.
That is the beauty of an HxStomp though. You can add clean bass blend to any effect.
Yep, even the RAT models in my Zoom benefit from clean blending. Personally I'd skip the 81. Just too hyped a pedal so prices are insane. I know it may sound glib, but my 20 mosky Black Rat was like one of the best Rat's I ever played. I honestly liked it better than my Volt Thrower. But overall I am not a RAT guy. Too mushy and undefined a sound for my style, which ironically is getting cleaner and cleaner. I just use a Rusty Box on low gain now, and truth be told, I often find I like the sound and feel best when I turn off all my dirt's altogether. So take my advice with that grain of salt in mind. However, I have had bascially every flavor of the month known to man, so I have some deep experience with a ton of dirts pedals. After many years of experimentation, my go to dirt is the Rusty Box and an MSL Parrallel Bass Distortion that I just recently had made. Oh, and A shift Line Buzz v1 which I think kicks major ass. My RAT rabbithole took me deep, but I soured on that sound after a while.
Hey I think you make some great points. Appreciate the input! The DRV is overpriced, for sure.
In my Stomp, I use a crossover at 1kHz for the "RAT." In other words, clean bass up to 1k and distortion only affects over 1k....and then I have a LPF block immediately after that (at 7k) to tame the fizz.
Absolutely how I wound up here. Am in the less is more camp these days... I like clean boost a lot now. It just makes the difference. I'm +50 so I can say this; It's like trying to read something, and then grabbing your reading glasses and it becomes much easier to see.
I posted a pic of my board with a spectra drive on the end a few posts back. I should have clarified that I have the "drive" part of the pedal loaded up with a clean boost.
Thanks bud. Sounds like you have really thought this thru. I love using crossovers too. I have a John K Cross mix which is a really nice utility pedal to have.
This is THE way to fine tune dirt nowadays, IMO. I used to run a Damnation Audio Bloop for the 1k LPF clean blend with my dirt, which sounded great. Then I realized I like the LPF frequency lower and got a Broughton Audio Filter FX Loop as I don't like much definition, fret noise, etc in my clean signal. Holy Toledo! This is how dirt should sound! Now I run 9 dirt pedals through the Filter FX Loop and they all sound fantastic with a clean low passed signal (330 hz). Just as important is the LPF after any dirt though. It helps get rid of the shrill, fizz and other high frequency noise.
Well, I don't want to get in trouble for "no effects" trolling, but yeah, I am getting more and more clean the more I actually get more serious about bass. I've been a drummer for most of my life and when starting the bass I really got into distortion, modulation etc because it sounded so cool. But truth be told I just never wrote anything worth a damn, and of course could never use that sound to actually drive a band with any authority. I've recently been learning Bee Gees and Hall and Oates (yes...cheesy, but surprisingly complex bass lines) and I experieced the "focus" you speak of only when my pedal board was totally off. Now I can hardly turn on my pedals without feeling like the bottom totally dropped out of the groove.
I just have it set above the board, the audition has a power out on it so I just need two cables and a power cord. Something like this:
That's why you need an octave pedal!!! Kick that on and it adds the beef back that you lost from your other effects...
On the topic of Rats for bass, ARC Effects Soothsayer has seemed very nice in this space for me but more as a fuzz alternative than as a dirty boost (how I'd usually use a Rat w/ guitar). Too chunky/fat/ for guitar for most of what I'm shooting for there, but that works out great for me on bass.
Broughton Locust Star is the bass RAT variant for me... and I've tried them all.
I think he is referring to the Shift Line Olympic MkIIIS
I've thought of doing this dozens of times over the years, so it is fantastic to see someone put it into practice.
~NvN
Is there any benefit to using the cabzone with a preamp that has cab sims? Would love to see how you are using it on your pedalboard.
I just use the shift line Olympic mkIII with ampeg 810 cab sim as my DI and run a little dirt and comp with it.
Sounds like you might be using the cabzone as your DI. Is that correct?
I haven't tried the Broughton version of a Rat because I don't have time to try to search for a used one. I'm sure it's wonderful. The Soothsayer is a great pedal. Had one and should have kept it. The very best Rat type pedal for bass by a long shot that I've tried is the Electrofoods Nepenthes. Giant sounding pedal for bass. I really can't say enough things about it, and I believe they're about to drop a batch of them this week.
