GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome (Part 1)

:rofl:

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Phase 90 is probably one of the best phasers for bass :ok_hand:

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I saw it on Facebook Marketplace at 4am this morning - insomnia! - and message the guy, then googled for reviews with a bass :rofl:

At lower ‘speeds’, it sounds great. Crank the speed up and it sounds awful! So, the slow lane for me! :wink:

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Yep absolute classic :slight_smile:

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For recording one thing I would suggest is still recording clean and applying effects in the DAW. The virtual effects actually often are higher quality than the “real” ones, especially for noise. And it’s just a lot more flexible while mixing.

It’s not so important for playing against backing tracks but when mixing against real instruments it’s far more convenient to have a dry bass track available and be able to tweak effects in the DAW.

Meanwhile, now you have an excellent phaser to use while not recording, and that doesn’t even just mean live; pedals are great fun for noodling around.

Absolutely, let someone else take the depreciation hit.

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Mine may not be the typical approach, but I use it for everything I record now and it works well for me.

I have a Boss RC-3 looper pedal and it’s the first thing my bass plugs into, and it sits inline between the bass and my pedals/amp. I dial in a sound that works well enough with the song I’m recording - doesn’t have to be perfect, just so that it sounds “right” to my ear while I’m playing.

Then, I stomp on the pedal to start recording. It perfectly captures the DI signal coming straight off of the bass, no real worries about getting the levels just right at this point.

I play the backing song on just about anything I can hear, and play along with it. The RC-3 records the dry bass track, and I’m hearing the sound I’ve dialed in, so it feels right. Ever notice that the tone you get can somewhat alter the way you play?

When I’m finished, I plug a USB cable into the RC-3 and transfer the wav file to my PC. Then I can import it into Reaper, normalize the audio for that dry track to the level I want, and then apply whatever FX I want to make it sound right in the mix.

You could even do some cool stuff like re-amping by using the RC-3 to play the same signal through different amps and recording that with a mic.

TL;DR - use a looper and you can have the best of both worlds, an affected tone getting to your ear while recording, and capturing the dry instrument signal directly off of the bass.

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Yeah, that’s fundamentally what you do with the DAW in the end too. And note that you can also listen to the effected track in the DAW in real time too; just don’t direct monitor the dry bass, but instead re-enable the track audio out, and you’ll hear the bass + virtual effects live. You can even play live this way.

Another good option is to put a preamp/DI early in the pedal chain and run its DI out directly to the audio interface on one input, and the effected out after your other pedals to the second input, and record them both simultaneously in the DAW. That way you have both and can blend while mixing.

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Anybody know if you get a discount on the helix plugin if you buy an HX stomp? I saw it mentioned somewhere, but I can’t find it on the line 6 or Sweetwater websites. If you get a discount does it have to be a new unit you buy?

They used to ($99 for Helix Native). I would be surprised if they stopped.

It would need to be a new unit or one where the original owner never bought it, I would guess.

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It’s still $99, here’s the link:

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/HelixNatUpHX--line-6-helix-native-for-hx-stomp-and-effects-owners

I have the Native Instruments Spark 40, and also Bias FX. Unfortunately, the patches aren’t cross-compatible between the two. I’ve considered going the Line6 route instead for that reason alone.

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I want Helix Native and don’t even want a Helix :rofl:

Seriously I would buy Native for $99 on its own. No interest in getting back in to hardware pedals at all though, my workflow is all in the DAW now.

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Thanks! I’m on a used gear kick, but the used pricing doesn’t make sense if I think I want the plug-in. I mean I have amplitube max, so I’m already in pretty good shape on plug-ins. On the other hand ooh shiny!

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Yeah this is another reason I haven’t tried to chase down a license - I am way more than covered by other plugins. Then again I am a couple thousand dollars deep in music software at this point so maybe my choices are a bad example to judge by :rofl:

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More second hand GAS, this time a Seymore Duncan Studio Bass Compressor for less than half the new price.

Now I need a pedal board, tuner and probably a chorus and a delay. My Orange amp has an overdrive on it, so the dirty sound is covered there. Anything else I need? :rofl:

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1/4" plywood size 24" x 14 1/2". Get a couple of black rubber feet to put on the back edge to create an angle. Spray paint everything black and cover with hook and loop.

If you want to get fancy you can add some “D” shaped cabinet handles on the sides, so it’s easier to pick up and move around.

I use the scratchy side of the hook and loop on my board and the fuzzy side on my pedals. When I take padals off and put them somewhere they don’t scratch any surfaces. I think this is the opposite of what’s reccomended but it works for me.

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I’d have to convert that to metric (:wink:), but it’s a great idea!

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That was the first pedal I ever bought. And six years later it’s still on my board.

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About another 100 posts or so and the GAS thread is going to run out of itself.

@JoshFossgreen - Do the threads automatically create a new thread now when they hit 10,000?

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This is the least surprising thing ever, GAS is a force of nature.

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It’s only taken this long because of the separate bass thread lol.

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