Originally posted by Aceman
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The NS2 - basic but the settings work well for me. Had it forever. The loop is a great feature. I wish it could have encompassed the dirt and compression, but I'd need two channels of noise gate for that. The buffer does color the sound a little bit. Only use it live.
The EQ pedal - Wampler EQuator, great-sounding semi parametric, easy to dial in. I used a couple of different graphics but came to realize the high-mid and low-mid frequencies needed more precise adjustment to really slot in with the guitar. This is always on and does what the crappy preamp in my bass used to do, but better. If I was buying now I would get the Source Audio EQ2 - programmable, two-channel, would knock the splitter off the board. HX Effects EQ is actually great too. But I like this pedal a lot.
The HOG - nothing else I've heard does what the HOG pedals do. I fell in love with it the first time I played one at a guitar shop and finally got one used at a reasonable price about 10 years ago. I have a few settings I like for bass - a big "bass organ" sound, a sort of whistly slow-attack higher synth for lead melodies (which is what this is set to right now), standard octave up and down settings to fill out the sound in certain parts. But it could be capable of a lot more, especially if I had a good expression pedal. Freeze function, whammy and wah effects - all very synthetic, no attempt at realism, just a cool unique sound. It's not something to use all the time but I find more spots for it the more I use it. HOG forever.
Turbo Tuner (ST-200 model) - yes, it's plugged in; its input is tapped off the unused dry output from the HOG so it's not in the signal path. When I first got it I didn't realize the importance of hitting the right impedance first and thought that it just "sucked tone" from my guitar, so I started tapping it off. It's actually fine as long as there's a pedal with the right input impedance upstream, but this way I don't have to have muted tuning if I don't want to. Can mute with the NS2, which still passes signal through the loop to the HOG and thus the tuner. The output in this position is usable as a dry direct signal for recording. Tuner on the HX Effects is not as useful to me. This one hears bass as quickly and accurately as guitar, and I can calibrate it for weirdo projects that don't tune to A440. I would replace this as quickly as possible if it died or got lost. The newer ST-300 has a switch so it can still pass signal when the tuner is on, if you want.
Emma Transmorgrifier - another very old past-life purchase. It is, among other things, the compressor that I have. Which makes it a lot cooler than some other neat ones that I don't have. It happens to sound really good on my bass with this rig. I don't know what I would compare it to, but I've sampled some of the more affordable usual suspects and this is still a good choice. Noisy, but solid enough tone-wise that it's not the first thing on the chopping block. HX Effects "Rochester Comp" model has it beat with less noise, though. Always on.
MXR Distortion III - as a guitarist I can see where you're coming from. It's kind of buzzy and inorganic and not as flexible as some. But in this spot in this rig, it's actually great. It beat out a few other "better" and more obvious dirt choices. Just the right amount of high end and attack while staying smooth on decay. Can dial it in enough between the tone knob and the amp channel EQ. I thought a fuzz would do better but this won hands down. The only pedal I could see replacing it would be something Rat-like, and now I'm actually using the Rat model on the HX in this spot. Turning this on and off gives me enough of a "clean channel" to be useful.
Carbon Copy - like I said, set for self-oscillation as a special effect, only used a couple of times a set. I'm using the CC for this because it resets when I hit the foot switch, unlike the Memory Toy, which will just keep screaming away in silence until I unplug or change the settings. I have a delay set up for this purpose on a momentary switch on the HX. This one and the MT are on long term loan from a friend.
Memory Toy - I actually love the sound of this. I used to use a DD3, which was fine, but between the modulation and the sort of "silvery" high end sheen on repeats, this pedal sounds wonderful on my bass. I haven't found an HX model that quite has the same subtle mojo. The only thing it's missing for me is tap tempo. I just got used to setting it per song since it didn't need to be exact. Again just for special spots in a handful of tunes. Keep in mind that both of these are only going into half the front of amp.
The errant guitar cable, yes... I would usually snake that one output cable from the CC around to the left, under the power supply, and do whatever needed to be done to get to the amp. That part of the cabling didn't move once it was set up, so there was nothing sweeping across the board.
Power supply under the board sounds great; I would need to build a different board and probably get a different power supply to make that work, but that would be worth it at some point if I ever get to play live again. This one only has a couple inches of rise from front to back. All the stuff with the foot switches to the front is the stuff I needed to access during songs, and everything else was always on. I did try to set everything up facing the right way but I couldn't make the space or the cabling work.
Photo is fuzzy because of some resizing during upload. I am sorry. The carpet may have been drunk for this photo shoot. If I do put this board back together, I will probably need newer cables and might be able to make it look tidy, but maybe I can embrace the mess and give it the Wasteland Guitars treatment. Either way, the function was good, this setup never tripped me up or let me down.
This particular setup is for a band called Heavy Meta from where I used to live in MA. Hope we can still make stuff happen, I'm only about 2.5 hours away from them now. There are new demos floating around. This song ("Caffeine Casket") is not one of my top picks from the album, but it's a lot of fun to play, and it's got some bass HOG stuff for flavor. The whole soft intro is bass (all six-string) - that melody is through the higher-octave "lead melody" patch on the HOG. There's also organ HOG later in the tune.
Renaming the band Organ Hog.
Anyway. Thank you for your pedalboard review.
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