Until next Sunday!
Long stream of consciousness entry since I am not serving this week and have time to relax (looked over the calendar and I served 12 of the last 14 weeks): Tomorrow, during service, I am training the rest of the bass guitar gang on how to operate and play the Moog.
Yes, I like to change up the pedal board from week to week as part of the QUEST. I'm on that quest to find the most utility and great sound in as few pedals as possible. The greatest hits pedals in the best order that delivers. I even tried the JHS Punchline (I sold it to Justin Meldal-Johnsen on Reverb, amazingly.). And yes, I tried the Stomp, twice in fact. There seems to be more organics and dynamic range in the analog stuff to my ears.
The brevity quest is why I tend to avoid the 5% pedals, those TalkBass nuance pedals that do a minor aesthetic, occupy space, but get lost once up on there on a big PA. That was the Low Rider for me. Or overlapping purpose pedals like the Kilt+Octave starting to make the Bass Microsynth a minor variant of the same thing. It's why I gravitate toward nasty fuzz pedals vs overdrive. I love the Gladio SC drive pedal, but at volume, full band, in the PA, it's just a slight shade difference than the core tone. The Kilt, on the other hand, is its own statement and I know it when it's on and enjoy playing with its unique character.
The statement pedals that seem to complement each other, don't occupy other sonic spaces already addressed: DCX Bass (or THDI) + Kilt + HX One (I use it for Octaver, Chorus, Memory Man Modulated Delay ambient bits, and Tuner). The next tier is the compressor and octaver.
I love analog octaver like the Subsonic and even the Bass Octave Deluxe, but I get what I need in the HX One, its has the best tracking octaver I've ever tried and you can put it anywhere in the signal chain. Putting the HX Octaver AFTER even the nastiest drives works very well, allows the drive pedals to stay pristine, then adds that low end slam at the end of the chain, no bloated overdosed drive pedals. But I still like a dedicated analog Octaver, so you will see that change on my boards frequently.
Then there is the BMS..... a bunch of things in one stomp. I find myself trying to get the huge thing off my board, to pull each thing out onto its own pedal (fuzz, octave), then cycle back around to the BMS all-in-one. Dialed in, it does sound good on the big choruses. One stomp to rule them all, to let the guitar players know who really owns the PA.
Onto compressors.... I've haven't been sold on the audible necessity of a compressor, expensive, board space, I see guys with them but dialed so they are not doing much of anything. But lately I'm coming around as I experiment with heavily compressed bass blended with clean. That really seems to increase apparent volume in the mix while keeping dynamics and switching to a heavy pick technique doesn't explode the signal level. It all just sits in there nicely. The Cali76 seems to do the heavy compression with dry blend very well. So, I'm coming around on the value of a compressor.
Lastly, I spend a lot of time tweaking pedal strategy in headphones at home. Then I get to church and the in-ears and mains are a very different story and I get home and take it all apart and re-evaluate.
Finally, we go to northern Michigan for late May-August, so, no more church services, no pedal boards, for a few months after my last two services in early May. More golf. I'll take my Serek Grand short scale with me to chart and practice the fall semester set that my main church posts mid-summer, around 30 songs. The Grand + Rolls headphone monitor is the summer rig.
I'll keep reading, here, though. Keep posting.
