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current state of my pedal board


jeremy c

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Looks good J.

I am coveteous of your Mu-Tron!

What is your opinion of the MXR octaver?

 

I have been using a fairly modest pedalboard in my current band and it has been enjoyable to finallly be in a situation that gives me an opprotunity to use them.

 

I have so many pedals but the last band was a coverband and I just didn't need any. Now that I have been working with them I realize that I really need to refine things a bit.

 

Aren't Loooper pedals handy! I have several plus a couple of simple ABY routers as well.They are probably the most useful thing to have on a pedalboard once it expands beyond a few basic boxes.

Nothing is as it seems but everything is exactly what it is - B. Banzai

 

Life is what happens while you are busy playing in bands.

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Fortunately, I'm not into effects. The way I am with basses (Rob Allen lined fretless Mouse and Sadowsky MV5 right now) I can't imagine how I'd be with effects. I like them at home but they never seem to translate well for me at gigs.

 

I let the guitar player (he only uses a drive, delay and chorus I think) and the keyboard player (Nord Electro 3 and a Yamaha S90) do all the tone changing. Drums and bass are pretty straight forward in my groups.

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Hey, I have those same pedals!

 

Ok, not really, just the same tuner and power supply. That counts for something, right? Now, if I only had the same Mu-Tron....

 

Anyway, what type of cables do you generally use on the board (looks like a couple different types)?

"Of all the world's bassists, I'm one of them!" - Lug
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Hey Breezepossum, that power cable for the Mu Tron you sent me is still working like a charm.

\m/

Erik

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

--Sun Tzu

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I love that mu-tron - wish I had one. I have the Q-Tron, OC-2, Line 6 DL4 and Big Muff Pi moslty in the cupboard at the moment as all of my gigs seem to be with the acoustic world music thing or church gigs. Maybe I should take the big muff to church to see what happens! Usually the organ pedals are my octaver there.

 

Great board JC, would love to see the faces of fellow musicians when you put that down!

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I like it! I like effects, but still have no pedalboard and no favourite setup.

I am surprised to see the Digitech compressor in your setup. I do like the analog optical Aphex I have, but sometimes am tempted to change, but I have never been lured by the Digitech. I like the two band concept, but am afraid that quality might be low. I am especially afraid of a digital compressor (is that one digital, by the way?).

The MXR octaver sounded sexy in the reviews and I might buy one someday.

Ah, and how is your overdrive? I loved an EBS and stupidly swapped for something more interesting for the band I played in. I mildly disliked an Ibanez PD7 and totally disliked a Behringer supposedly cloning the ODB.

-- Michele Costabile (http://proxybar.net)
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Here's the Boss section of my pedal board.

 

http://i210.photobucket.com/albums/bb135/nicklabatearthlinkdotnet/GEAR/6299455567_c23c04f8f9_b.jpg

 

Just off to camera left: Trace Elliot dual compressor & Tech21 VT Bass Deluxe. Pardon the photo quality, it was taken in a somewhat dim studio with a camera phone.

 

I just replaced the Boss Super Chorus pedal with the Boss CEB-3. Plus there might be an addition or two soon. I've been eyeing a couple of things recently.

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"My concern is, and I have to, uh, check with my accountant, that this might bump me into a higher, uh, tax..."

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To answer questions:

 

Some of the cables are made by Fender.

 

The ones with the blue shrink wrap say UTC Low Noise audio cable, I don't know where I got those. They were longer and I cut them to various sizes as needed for the board (and of course replaced jacks as needed).

 

I normally am not a fan of compression. That one is there to tame the spikes put out by the Mu-Tron III and Boss Bass Synth pedal. It was inexpensive on evilBay, so I got it. Yes, it's digital and the dual bands allow me to just compress the highs. At one time I had a rack mounted unit and it blew up. I'd like to have a more transparent compressor, but it's not really a priority at this point.

 

The Way Huge distortion pedal is great....it has lots of adjustable parameters and there are two trim pots inside for more tweaking. It seems to be able to do almost anything.

 

There are more pedals in the closet, including a Russian Bassballs pedal, some that I might be selling soon, and a whole nother pedalboard for guitar.

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Going barefoot these days, just a bass, cable & amp. Not much use for effects on the bass in the band I'm in. I kinda like the simplicity of it, too. I must be getting old...

Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.

 

 

 

 

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Nearly pulled the trigger on a new octave pedal today. I took stock of what I have on hand and discovered that right now I have THREE octave pedals. Two of the old Boss OC-2's, as well as the newer OC-3.

 

I've also had the opportunity to check out the Aguilar Octamizer. First, props to Aguilar for posting as many sound samples as they have on their website. It's really helpful for a prospective buyer, and between the sound samples and a glowing review from one of Aguilar's endorsers I figured that I needed to check this out. Today I did just that.

 

Now, I've been well aware of what the Boss OC-2 could do from the early 90's when I was first exposed to Pino Palladino's playing. It's been one of the most frequently used effects on my pedal board. And it plays prominently on the record my band just released. But do I need two of the older (yet cooler) model, and another of the revised Boss Octaver? Probably not.

 

But what about the Aguilar Octamizer? WOW. There's always been a tracking issue with the OC-2 when you get below C or D on the A string. With the Octamizer, there's no such dying with the signal. It tracks much better than the Boss ever has.

 

But now? I'm in the unenviable position of trying to sell off one of my OC-2's before I get the Octamizer. Or, I could wait and check out the EBS Octabass first!

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"My concern is, and I have to, uh, check with my accountant, that this might bump me into a higher, uh, tax..."

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http://i1124.photobucket.com/albums/l578/CoopsBassBlog/DeathStar1.jpg

 

Here's my new bradycases.com true bypass board. Took me 60 feet of solderless lava cable and 70 right angle plugs. I powered it with the Gig Rig Generator and 4 distributors. It's got 2 bass inputs, 1 output, and a power outlet on the top (usually powers a laptop). Here's the chain: starting with a Radial ToneBone Bassbone, MarkBass Compressore, JHS Bass Bomb Boost, T1M Blend pedal, Zvex Fuzz Factory, Pro Co Rat Distortion, Xotic X-Blender, "Groucho" distortion (a modded Boss odb-3 that has no internal Boss parts anymore), Crowther Prunes & Custard, Line6 M5, Boss Loop Station RC-3, Mid-Fi Clari(not) Envelope Vibrato Fuzz, Ernie Ball Volume Pedal w/T1M buffer mod, TC Electric PolyTune, Electro-Harmonix Micro POG, Electro-Harmonix Stereo Memory Man, Guyatone MD3 delay, Plutoneium Chi-Wah-Wah.

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Hey Tom - that is correct. All of the pedals stay on, but they are only really activated when I switch on the chain at the bottom with the numbers. That way, the signal is not going through any cables or pedals until you decide to use them. It made a huge difference in my tone and signal strength when I switched to this true bypass board (instead of a pedaltrain pro powered by voodoo power supplies). Also, since I play 18 or so pedals, on a regular board - if you aren't getting any sound at all or getting a hum, etc - it was impossible to figure out which pedal it was or if a cable was bad. With this, you can bypass the entire board to see if it's the bass or the baord, then you can click on each channel one at a time until you see which pedal has the problem - then just turn that channel off. It's already been a lifesaver at gigs!!!
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That is a monster. What type of shows do you do? I guess can understand if you were in a band that must copy a lot of exact sounds like Weird Al's backing band. Don't take that as a negative, I actually saw a show of his/theirs on TV recently and the band was impressive in covering as much as they did, think of it as board envy if anything.
If you think my playing is bad, you should hear me sing!
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That is a monster. What type of shows do you do? I guess can understand if you were in a band that must copy a lot of exact sounds like Weird Al's backing band. Don't take that as a negative, I actually saw a show of his/theirs on TV recently and the band was impressive in covering as much as they did, think of it as board envy if anything.
If you think my playing is bad, you should hear me sing!
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Hey bNb - I hear ya, I get that question a lot...or "how many of those pedals do you really play?". I play in a few cover bands, 1 original band - but my main gig is worship music at The Village Church in Dallas. It's a huge, but very very young church so we play all kinds of music - including loops, hip hop (Tedashii goes to our church and I've backed him up a few times), and just about everything else. I really started with the delays, pog, loops, etc - to make up for a time when we were really short of keyboard players.

From this set up, I can play a pre-recorded loop (from the RC-3), lay down an organ pad sound (from the POG and delays) and then play a bassline over it. All of the distortions, blends, and fuzz pedals are so I can get all the different sounds that I hear in my head, ya know? A lot of times, I'll build throughout a song from light distortion, to overdrive, to fuzz by the end of the song.

 

Basshappi - thanks man! the plan is to do a full on demo of each pedal and how I use it, and the other pedals I went through before settling on each one.

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