Source Audio Sorcerers Society (S.A.S.S) Part 3

[rsmith601]

As noted, this is just the tone shaping filters. The tones in each effect are different.

 

[Adamixoye]

Ah, fair enough. So even though the effects have more or less the same names, there is some difference in the modeling between the units?

 

[rsmith601]

Ah, fair enough. So even though the effects have more or less the same names, there is some difference in the modeling between the units?

Big time. Bob spent literally 10 months on the effects in the OFD Guitar and OFD Bass. The guitar one came first, and the bass one second. This is one reason why it is not really fair to expect that one should get the guitar version for free after buying the bass one. The tone shaping filters were easy.

If we don't spend thousands of hours tweaking sounds for perfection with a group of guitars and separately with the group of basses, then we wont stand a chance as a company!

I am going to make a snide comment (sorry in advance!): Making an analog pedal sound good can require only a good paint job in some quarters (JohnK and some others exempt!!). Making a digital pedal sound good is infinitely more difficult, because there is a prejudice before it is even plugged in that it will not sound good. Smeet's blind phaser test will not be forgotten

 

[Adamixoye]

This is one reason why it is not really fair to expect that one should get the guitar version for free after buying the bass one.

I don't know if you're referring to people wanting to use one or the other for both purposes (as in the current case under discussion) or those of us who asked about the possibility of a firmware swap between the two. I understand the business realities, and I wouldn't say I've ever "expected" to get it for free. Money isn't even necessarily the prime issue; space and power are a big issue. As someone who plays both, I love pedals with the flexibility to sound great on both guitar and bass. If you had in place a system where just the firmware swap could be had at a price, that would be a consideration as well.

 

[adamaarts]

Yay! Source Audio has an Instagram now! Went through and tagged SA in all my old posts. Good stuff!

 

[Nic.]

Thank you for the details! I hope I didn't offend you asking about using the guitar OFD on bass, if I did, my apologies... I wanted the info mainly for EQing within my band. Given this data though, I -might- have to discuss EQ-ing with my guitarists again (I'm cutting and boosting at different freqs on the MWBD pro and my EQ pedal to make space for guitar and fit in where they make space for me on their own EQs). Maybe this weekend I'll set my EQ to something like what the MWBD 2 would be like and see how well it works out.

I see why I could boost the bass with the guitar OFD without overwhelming bass drum (like when I boosted bass using my EQ pedal). The high pass at 50Hz seems pretty useful.

I went to google for the Smeet's Phaser Test. Pretty cool results. Someone with a large herd of distortions should do one with the OFD and Multiwave. I think digital is definitely catching on, at least around here - in my community, nearly every bassist I know, and some guitarists, are shifting towards digital.

To be honest, I didn't think I'd want to use a modulator on my board, but after listening and reading that thread, I'm looking up Orbital demos now. I'm trying to find samples where bassists actually use it live in a band - I actually don't really know how I'd use an Orbital live.

Something from that thread struck me as pretty interesting -

The enclosure design came from the same firm that does industrial design for Apple. They told us our pedals needed to look cool, and that these look cool (we are engineers....so we believed them. It is what they do).

So that's where the designs came from! I'm not sure if it looks 'cool' but it's definitely unique and recognizable. It hasn't been said on the other thread, so I'm gonna say this here (since it's a general point about SA pedals anyway) - I think these designs would look rather cool as personal electronic devices, but I'm not so sure about that as pedals (I like them, but I can see how a lot of people don't - I think the traditional rectangular box is still more popular, although this makes SA pedals damn recognizable).

As a side note, I can't believe the SB2 pedals are actually square, it definitely gives the illusion of wideness.

Yay! Source Audio has an Instagram now! Went through and tagged SA in all my old posts. Good stuff!

Didn't know you can retag old posts! I'm going to go follow SA now anyway.

 

[rsmith601]

I am NEVER offended by anyone on TB. You all are the best, which is why I spend my time working with you!! Sorry I made a snide comment earlier!!

 

[Nic.]

Thank goodness... I wasn't so worried about the snide comment, but I was worried earlier about the emphasis on the effort spent making the guitar and bass OFD different. I was worried that I was coming across as just dismissing these differences :x

You know, I mention to my friends that the president of this company is always on the board addressing questions and concerns and they can't believe it. I think you guys are doing something pretty amazing.

 

[taowin]

New to Source Audio but have the hub, reverb, orbital and manta. Anyone have a suggestion for the right order for these and an exciter/compressor pedal (actually a Zoom multistomp that I use just for those two effects)

 

[FretNoMore]

I would start with Manta --> Orbital --> Reverb.

Compressors people tend to put first, but many also like them last or at least after a filter pedal.

There are no hard rules for effect order though, experiment and see what you like!

 

[Nic.]

I'm actually using my MS60B with compression right at the -end- of my chain (see my signature). I guess the benefit is that you can get more touch sensitivity out of filters and distortion without changing your overall volume that much. Either way is probably good, you could experiment... or get another MS60B and have it at the start AND at the end

Other than that, yeah I would agree with manta -> orbital -> reverb, although I've to admit that the idea of orbital into manta intrigues me.

 

[FretNoMore]

I'm actually using my MS60B with compression right at the -end- of my chain (see my signature). I guess the benefit is that you can get more touch sensitivity out of filters and distortion without changing your overall volume that much. Either way is probably good, you could experiment... or get another MS60B and have it at the start AND at the end

Other than that, yeah I would agree with manta -> orbital -> reverb, although I've to admit that the idea of orbital into manta intrigues me.

MS-60B into Manta should give you endless options for weirdness.

Once I have the new board built my chain will bassically be MS-60B -> OFD -> Manta -> Orbital -> MS-70CDR - that should be fun.

 

[Nic.]

Oh yes that sounds like a wonderful combination. I'm probably heading to Tokyo again next April, I intend to pick up a CDR there. It's really cheap! The 50B, 60B and 70CDR were something like 6000, 7000 and 8000yen respectively, which, given the current exchange rate, is like US$50-70! By then I'd have my hub and full midi setup so both the MS and SA stuff can all be controlled at once. I'd probably do the same as you, put the 60B at the start and CDR at the back. Probably OFD -> 60B -> MWBD -> Manta -> CDR.

Oh, but I'd want a compressor at the back too. Sigh =/ I wonder how I'll deal with that.

 

[rsmith601]

I don't know if you're referring to people wanting to use one or the other for both purposes (as in the current case under discussion) or those of us who asked about the possibility of a firmware swap between the two. I understand the business realities, and I wouldn't say I've ever "expected" to get it for free. Money isn't even necessarily the prime issue; space and power are a big issue. As someone who plays both, I love pedals with the flexibility to sound great on both guitar and bass. If you had in place a system where just the firmware swap could be had at a price, that would be a consideration as well.

I actually think we are going in a direction where if you get our hardware, we are going to give you access to lots and lots of stuff. It is a really nice advantage of our approach and I think we need to offer that rather than hold back. We did not really consider this when we created the OFDs so much, because that was pre-hub and pre-hub manager. Now that we have those things and are thinking about the future, we are on board!! Thanks for being patient.

 

[Nic.]

I don't know about the others, but I would totally be willing to even pay for additional features, like the micropayment model on the iPad apps and downloading additional patches on the Zoom devices - I've seen the quality of everything put out so far, and I'd think it's probably worth it.

 

[nshuman]

I don't know about the others, but I would totally be willing to even pay for additional features, like the micropayment model on the iPad apps and downloading additional patches on the Zoom devices - I've seen the quality of everything put out so far, and I'd think it's probably worth it.

Yeah, that is how Eventide does it for the H9 I think.

 

[Nic.]

Yeaaah, I was looking that up for my ambient board a while back. I think they had two tiers - a basic version with the most basic effects ("H9 Core"), $100 more for a collection of standard effects ("H9", and purchasing those effects separately would cost more), and... I think it was something like $30 for each additional effect? I think for anything like that, allowing a short free trial is extremely important too.

Well, those are prices for basic effects. I wonder how SA would want to price something like converting a guitar OFD to a bass OFD.

Another thought - since all the pedals have the same physical structure, I wonder if they'd ever do something like the Neunaber Slate - a 'blank' pedal where you can load anything you want on it. It'd be really cool to just buy one blank pedal with a control wheel of 24 options, and fill it up with only the effects you need from the various other pedals. But of course, then you get the problem of only being able to run one at once. Then again, two or three 'blank' pedals could be really useful if you sometimes want to run your distortion before your modulation and sometimes the other way round.

 

[Adamixoye]

For Eventide, I think it's actually $20/algorithm; at least, it was at one point. It's not super obvious without downloading the app. I wonder, though, with the release of the H9 Max (a 3rd tier beyond the Core and the regular---includes all algorithms, including future algorithms) how many people will actually bother to buy the regular---once you're at that price point, why not just go whole hog? (Cores are still useful if you already have a Max, because of the algorithm sharing.) Eventide also does do free temporary trials of the algorithms.

For SA, there's a lot of things I could see them doing, and a lot of things I'm sure they've already thought about. I think a "blank" pedal sure would be interesting, although it sounds like the delay won't fit into their SB2 mold, because of the stereo outputs. Broken record that I am, I'll reiterate that I would just like to start with being able to do guitar/bass firmware swaps (OFDs, MWD, Ray Filters), and I might be willing to pay a premium over the regular SB2 price to have that. (Not another full purchase price, hopefully, but maybe a significant fraction thereof.)

I do wonder how much memory the SB2 pedals have? Would you need to hook up a computer (via the Hub) every time you swapped firmware, or could you store both "modes" on the pedal and have a way to switch modes from the pedal interface?

 

[NoxNoctus]

I do wonder how much memory the SB2 pedals have? Would you need to hook up a computer (via the Hub) every time you swapped firmware, or could you store both "modes" on the pedal and have a way to switch modes from the pedal interface?

I remember them talking about dealing with "limited code space" or the like as it is, so I doubt it. Would be cool for sure, but yah.

 

[FretNoMore]

A question for Hot Hand 3 users: What power does the receiver use, is it standard 9V or does it use the supplied PU (which I believe is 5V) ?

Also, if someone could give me the dimensions (footprint) of the reciever; that is also not possible to find on the web site or in the manual as far as I can see.