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Oh, I think I can give you a run for your money on the "obsessing as only I can do" part of your post.
Oh, I think I can give you a run for your money on the "obsessing as only I can do" part of your post.
I'm actually going to use the HXS from church tonight for a Xmas party gig. If no one can tell, I'll probably buy one for myself. I'll have my other stuff along just in case, but I'm going to resist the urge to run it into my REDDI as ideally I want the HXS to be able to stand on it's own.
Truth. I forgot who I was talking to, lol. We all have a problem, and nobody around here ever encourages people NOT to spend money. We only feed each other's sickness(es) . . . in the best possible way. But with most every purchase/swap these days, my tone gets better and better. The quest is totally worth it. Plus, it's job security for my mailman.Oh, I think I can give you a run for your money on the "obsessing as only I can do" part of your post.
So I did a thing. Eeeesh.
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I was looking at my ginormous pedalboard the other day and feeling rather disgusted with myself. The amount of money and time I have spent on this stuff is ridiculous. And I'm too old to lug this thing around. Plus, I drag this huge thing to church only to use 5 of the pedals, and maybe 1-2 others on very rare occasion. (Now, my future/pending cover band will be a different conversation, but even then I don't want to have to lug this huge thing around).
After listening to countless demos online, and obsessing over it as only I can do, I decided to give the Stomp a shot. My main chain right now ends in a digital amp sim pedal anyway, so that's really the main thing that I need it for, and then it should also give me the flexibility of adding in some great drive tones on that rare occasion that I want/need that. Not to mention the billion other things that it can do. We shall see. My signal chain will still end in my Radial JDI. Down the road I might consider upgrading to a tube DI, but that is a conversation for another time.
Now, where do I go from here? I know there are some presets you can buy, which is probably where I'll start, because I don't have the time I'd like to sit and figure this all out for myself. I will probably also need one of those midi footswitches to bank up and down. I'm way too old, tall and fat to bend over and bank it up by hand during a set. There are a ton of options there. Any other thoughts?
I think the only thing I will miss is some of that difficult-to-define "heft" and "warmth" provided by analog gear as opposed to digital gear. But adding the HX Stomp to my board will not result in any loss of transformers or preamps or anything in my signal chain. Just the digital Atomic Bass Box and drives/mod/wah/octave pedals, etc. I'll still have a few Broughtons up front for boosting and tone shaping, and the transformer of the Radial JDI to add some heft. So I'm hoping all it will do is make my pedalboard significantly smaller and lighter and easier to carry around with no loss to sound quality. If my bass sounds half as good as Chad's in his comparison between the HX/JDI and the Ampeg PF-50T he did a while back, I'll be satisfied. I can always add a higher quality or tube DI down the road for more of that "heft" that usually only we bassists or studio engineers pick up on.
Same thing. Just that the big Helix has double the DSP and more routing options, etc.
The tube preamp/amp captures I've saved to my Quad Cortex sound virtually identical to the real thing. But I still like seeing and smelling the glowing tubes.
