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Tech 21 Steve Harris Fly Rig

#321
J Troska said:
This makes me want to try the dUg. The YouTube clips sounded too grinding for my tastes. But I’m all about the overall mix.
Click to expand...

I bought the dUg for clangy dUgTone, but a really great surprise for me was that the clang can be tamed. Note: I never use the clean channel soloed, I always dial in dirt, but even so I discovered that if I rolled the passive tone control on my bass way back, I could go from metallic clang to warm growl without touching the pedal. If you don't want any clang at all, warmth will be easier (use less Drive, less Treble, etc).

My hardest rockin' band broke up early this year, but the dUg has still been a go-to pedal with my conventional bands who play classic rock, R&B, funk, blues, country, pop.

The SH-1 is also a great pedal, so I'm not suggesting you should immediately throw down holiday $$$ on the dUg (unless you are still Xmas shopping for yourself ;)). Just sayin', the dUg pedal doesn't have to clank.
 
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#324
I've been pretty intrigued by this pedal based on demos (the first time a Sansamp has caught my interest in a long time!). One thing I'm not seeing certainty about in this thread is whether one of the Mid bands is in fact pre-drive (so acting as a "character" control of sorts). There have been a few people on here claiming as much, but the manual says nothing about it (and actually says the entire EQ is post-EQ) and I can't tell for sure from demos. The manual does say that Mid 2 is the only EQ band active when the Blend is turned to fully clean, which suggests it might come before the signal splits into the drive circuitry. Can anyone verify for sure?!!
 
#328
I think the confusion is because the difference is subtle. All SH-1 EQ knobs (and switches) will affect tone no matter how the gain levels are set or which channel is used. The difference is that a pre-drive EQ knob will also affect overall distortion level: boosting will increase distortion, cutting will reduce. Of course it also changes tone, including the flavor of the distortion. Post-drive EQ will change tone, but will not affect overall distortion level.


Another example: I discovered this behavior via the Darkglass B7K pedal. It has pre-drive tone contour switches and post-drive rotary EQ. My favorite technique is to use pre-drive bass cut, which thins out overall tone but also focuses distortion on the mids and highs, leaving the low frequencies cleaner. I then boost the post-drive Bass EQ, which re-fattens the signal by bringing up the clean-ish lows. End result isn't as radical as a multi-band overdrive (such as the DP-3X) which only distorts higher frequencies leaving lows completely clean, but it's similar. And yeah, this tone can be aggressive and metallic, but that's exactly what I'm going for.

I can't yet give a similar explanation on how pre/post EQ works on the SH-1. Right now there's not much method to my tweaking, I just turn knobs until I get a tone I like. Even so, it's easy IMO to get a wide variety of great bass tones.
 
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#329
Fuzzbass said:
I think the confusion is because the difference is subtle. All SH-1 EQ knobs (and switches) will affect tone no matter how the gain levels are set or which channel is used. The difference is that a pre-drive EQ knob will also affect overall distortion level: boosting will increase distortion, cutting will reduce. Of course it also changes tone, including the flavor of the distortion. Post-drive EQ will change tone, but will not affect overall distortion level.


Another example: I discovered this behavior via the Darkglass B7K pedal. It has pre-drive tone contour switches and post-drive rotary EQ. My favorite technique is to use pre-drive bass cut, which thins out overall tone but also focuses distortion on the mids and highs, leaving the low frequencies cleaner. I then boost the post-drive Bass EQ, which re-fattens the signal by bringing up the clean-ish lows. End result isn't as radical as a multi-band overdrive (such as the DP-3X) which only distorts higher frequencies leaving lows completely clean, but it's similar. And yeah, this tone can be aggressive and metallic, but that's exactly what I'm going for.

I can't yet give a similar explanation on how pre/post EQ works on the SH-1. Right now there's not much method to my tweaking, I just turn knobs until I get a tone I like. Even so, it's easy IMO to get a wide variety of great bass tones.
Click to expand...
This is why I’m curious- I’m a longtime Darkglass user and a big part of the versatility of most of those circuits is some sort of pre-drive EQ, shaping the overall character and intensity of the drive. Though I haven’t been a huge fan of older Sansamp circuits I’ve used, the Character control does a similar purpose in those and allows a lot of versatility to the way the drive reacts. Certainly there is a built-in pre-EQ shape with the Steve Harris, but I was intrigued by the idea of a pre-drive mid as well.
 
#330
It all appears to be post to me. I hear no sign of anything being pre-gain. As I turn the knobs, the volume level of their frequency bands goes up and down but the saturation seems to stay the same. There’s nothing like the Character control of the VTBass here, which is basically a pre-gain mid.

I really like this SH1 pedal. I play finger-style and a lot of overdrives get mushy with fingers. But this one stays really tight. It’s not high-gain. I perceive it more as a pushed clean until the gain knob gets up around 3 o’clock.

it can seem excessively bright on its own but sounds better in a mix. I still turn the treble back. But I’m using a MusicMan bass with round sound strings. Presumably Steve had the pedal tweaked for his Precision with flat wounds, which is a much darker starting point than where my bass is.
 
#332
J Troska said:
I’m thinking the Bite is pre-gain. If I set the Gain knob to about 1 or 2 o’clock, I can hear the sound get crunchier when I activate the Bite. So I think it’s pushing the upper mids and reducing the low frequencies before the gain stage.
Click to expand...
The Bite is the part that really draws me- I use a few different pedals to get a nice articulate grind/clank up top that I love (and the Bright switch on my amp is in this range too). The demos with the Bite sound right on in that regard for me. Thanks!
 
#334
dannybuoy said:
Bite off on the SH1 is very dark to me, I didn't find much use for that setting.
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That’s because the Speaker Sim boosts the lows a lot (in addition to cutting the highs). Way more than the VTBass does.

If you deactivate the Bite and the Speaker Sim, you get a flat response. The Bite tilts it heavily toward treble. And the Speaker Sim cuts the extreme highs and bumps the lows up.

you can still get a decent sound with the Bite deactivated and the Spesker Sim on. But it takes some whacky EQ settings to get there.
 
#336
sunbeast said:
The Bite is the part that really draws me- I use a few different pedals to get a nice articulate grind/clank up top that I love (and the Bright switch on my amp is in this range too). The demos with the Bite sound right on in that regard for me. Thanks!
Click to expand...
The SH1 will definitely do that articulate grind/clank. It’s not very high-gain compared to other pedals. It compresses and overdrives more than distort. I like that because it stays in the sweet spot with finger style playing, whereas some pedals fart or mush .

The Bite and Speaker Sim do pretty much the same thing here as they do on the VTBass but way more excessively. The Bite really pushes the upper mids a lot. Borderline obnoxiously so. But it works in a mix. And the Speaker Sim fattens the lows far more excessively than the VTBass as well.

I consider the VTBass more of an amp simulator, with a looser and more scooped tone. And the SH1 more of an overdrive pedal to go in front of an amp. Its sound is more compressed and mid focused.
 
#337
J Troska said:
That’s because the Speaker Sim boosts the lows a lot (in addition to cutting the highs). Way more than the VTBass does.

If you deactivate the Bite and the Speaker Sim, you get a flat response. The Bite tilts it heavily toward treble. And the Speaker Sim cuts the extreme highs and bumps the lows up.

you can still get a decent sound with the Bite deactivated and the Spesker Sim on. But it takes some whacky EQ settings to get there.
Click to expand...

After I cut the trace to the hicut circuit on the non-speakersim side of my Oxford(how's that for confusing?), I prefer it over depressing the speakersim button - even going direct. I'd rather use the speakersim on my Behringer-G100 direct box or even impulse reponse speakersims than cut all those highs out.
 
#338
J Troska said:
The SH1 will definitely do that articulate grind/clank. It’s not very high-gain compared to other pedals. It compresses and overdrives more than distort. I like that because it stays in the sweet spot with finger style playing, whereas some pedals fart or mush .

The Bite and Speaker Sim do pretty much the same thing here as they do on the VTBass but way more excessively. The Bite really pushes the upper mids a lot. Borderline obnoxiously so. But it works in a mix. And the Speaker Sim fattens the lows far more excessively than the VTBass as well.

I consider the VTBass more of an amp simulator, with a looser and more scooped tone. And the SH1 more of an overdrive pedal to go in front of an amp. Its sound is more compressed and mid focused.
Click to expand...
I mostly use low-gain drive sounds, even compared to most of the clips of this pedal so far- I use my amp for much of the drive. Looks like I have to try one of these!
 
#340
I have a curious question...do you folks feel like this pedal omits the need for a compressor in the chain? I wonder if Steve Harris uses a compressor still when he’s using this pedal. I’m unable to ask him but glad that I can ask here. Haha! He actually yelled at me once. Once, but with good reason.
 

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