i didn’t have any idea why anyone would want to buy an hx stomp which only can do 1 effect at a time. then i saw the andertons review of it on youtube and now i get it. like you said at the end of this post about octavers, synths or envelopes, i love the way all of them sound but in a real world situation how many times are you going to use them? and more importantly how many times are you going to need more than one at the same time? it does make more sense to buy something like an hx stomp to get an effect that you will only use for one song than to buy a standalone pedal instead.
That’s exactly why I bought mine. I was tired of the menu diving and the choice paralysis my HX Stomp gave me. So I bought a pre amp I really like and added a decent compressor. Then added the HX One (with in built tuner, so that’s one less pedal as well). Everything fits on a small pedal board.
At home I scroll through the HX One and find say a drive pedal that I like. I tweak the settings and levels (So they match the levels of the other pedals in my list). I save those settings to a user list. You can change the name of the preset to whatever you want.
Then when I’m playing with others I simply hit the home button and pick from my custom list, the pedal I want. I don’t need to then scroll through the 250 presets at rehearsal. The three or four pedals I want are right there, saved to my settings and ready to go.
We finish one song and I hit home, scroll one or two presets to the Fuzz / Drive sound I want and done.
It looks really good @gabe. The lack of menu diving and physical controls look like the kind of thing I’d be interested in. Plus you can create your own presets you like and save them to a bank. Built in tuner and you can edit the patches on your phone or laptop. Wow.
For now I’m happy with where I am and just want to play / practice and not overthink gear.
Yeah that thing looks fine and a lot of fun. I prefer the more programmatic ones myself but can understand why someone would prefer something like that.
Were I still buying hardware it would probably be tempting to just save up for a Quad Cortex and call it a day. The ToneX is close but not quite there.
Then again, can’t go wrong with a Helix, and $99 for Helix Native is nice.
Add an outboard compressor and that’s exactly my setup. I don’t go crazy with a ton of effects, but it has nearly every tool I might want to use. And being able to use the same patches between the hardware units and the software plugin is huge.
Honestly nothing on that amp should be set at noon, with the exceptions of gain and volume which will change depending on the levels you need at any given time. A flat EQ on that amp, using the face of a clock, is roughly 10-2-2-10. The bass and treble are boost-only and the mids are cut-only. So start there then set to taste.
That said - setting it at noon is what gives you the classic Fender tonestack tone, which has a pronounced mid scoop, and is a signature of their sound. It’s also why a lot of people prefer Fender amps. There is nothing wrong at all with noon settings there and it’s what most people go with; @HP_Hovercraft and @Barney are correct though, if you want to make it as transparent as possible so as to not EQ your bass much, you should cut the bass and treble a bit and boost the mids.
Then again, if you want an amp with flat EQ, you probably shouldn’t buy a Fender.
Personally I think Fender amps sound better with the scoop; it’s their character and they do that tone well.
The Contour settings will accentuate that scoop.
If you’re curious, here’s a graph of the “flat” frequency response of a Rumble 100:
That scoop is what gives Fender amps their character.
There’s a reason people went for them, some people loved that (and still do).
For guitar myself I much prefer more Orange or Marshall (which are quite different too actually), while my bandmate is all about the AC20 sound.
For bass for me, either the Ampeg or GK sound all the way (also quite different), depending how aggressive I am feeling about the tone. I kind of like Darkglass but get tired of the high end clank, and when you take that away it’s basically a slightly less scooped sound than Fender (with mroe low mids for sure).
