When I played more than 20 years ago, I was so fed up with reeds, I started to play with something called Fibracell reeds… are those still around? Or better artificial reeds?? Just curious…
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I own an old Ibanez TS9 and it’s great with a guitar but it doesn’t work well with a bass in my opinion. I don’t like the mellow-muddy tone and the TS sucks a lot of the low end content. even with my parallel mixer with wet/dry control, the TS doesn’t perform well for me.
But as always it all depends on the particular tones you like and are searching for.
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Reeds have come a loooooong way, Rigotti has really upped the game on quality and makes them for a few other brands, however, you are at $50 a box of 10 (5 for bari). Almost any reed is playable out of the box, with very little working of it other than flattening the table.
There are a lot more synthetic contenders, and a lot of folks swear by them. I don’t.
For me, I am a fairly wet player, and the moisture builds up way too much on synthetics for me, and, they cut into my lip pretty badly.
For those of you in the bass world, this is what a reed journey looks like…
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Thanks for sharing 
(Now, back to bass business!!)
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The B3K arrives by Monday (hoping sooner), very excited to see what it can do.
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Good pick! I’m always surprised how good the overdrive/distortion sounds with DG gear.
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Yeah B3K is a great choice! All of them are really 
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ooohhhh… I’d love to A/B these!
Just go ahead and ship it on over to CA!!
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Another thing I have to add here - the bass you’re using has a HUGE impact on what pedals work well.
My 18V active Modulus doesn’t get along real well with most pedals, and certainly hates the TS9.
My P-bass LOVES pedals, and is now married to the TS9, and they’re expecting cute little baby riffs any day now.
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{groan} . . . 
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I’ll drive it over in trade for some F2F bass lessons! :
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I had the same with my Warwick. A passive bass seems so much easier on pedals.
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Ha! Done. Just drive towards San Francisco.
My Badass Bass Player Radar™ will go off as soon as you get close and we’ll make it happen!
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Pick me upon the way 
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OK, question.
I got the Darkglass Microtubes B3K today.
I like the tones that I can generate with it for sure, but a question.
There is a LOT of hiss with zero input and the pedal engaged with level and drive up, more hiss with more up, even more with the grunt switch on.
Is this normal, or should there be a clean silent signal with NO signal coming in (vol all the way down on bass and/or tuner pedal engaged ahead of B3K?
Not having ever owned an overdrive before, I don’t know if this is how it should be or if there is something wrong with the pedal. When I listen to videos online I don’t hear this hiss. Not talking about the overdriven fuzz when notes are played, btw.
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Good question!
No overdrive pedal that I am aware of generates a silent or clean output with the drive turned up.
Guitarists like noise gates for this.
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It might ne worth sending Darkglass a sound sample and asking them if it’s working as expected.
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It shouldn’t be bad, but it’s not going to be silent. Not on any overdrive without a built in gate. At least that I know of.
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So I figured out part of the problem. I went right into my DI and the hiss/noise went down considerably. So back to the Fender Studio 40 and tried a couple other amp sims and it seems a LOT better, more like I would expect.
I get some wonky unexpected results sometimes from bass/pedal/Studio sims, I am awaiting a replacement amp as Fender (and I) think this one is defective. Has bluetooth connectivity issues, the same sim amp sounds really noisy one day and not the next. I was on a setting that did not appear to mesh (and probably amp issues too). Switched and now I am getting beautiful overdriven sounds like I would have expected.
I am growing more skeptical of the Fender Modeling amp, hoping it is the defective nature and something in the speaker circuit as the XLR out on the back does not have the same issues when recording.
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Ya, I still don’t know.
Still can really make this thing hiss full up.
Does anyone else have one of these who can comment on background hiss with drive all the way up and grunt on?
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