MXR Thump/MXR Bass Preamp comparison - Steve Lawson

Right, my first mostly-successful attempt at doing a split screen video! This is in response to the people asking for a demo of the difference in sound between the MXR Thump bass preamp and the MXR Bass Preamp - similar in many ways, but with one fairly major difference.
WARNING - the differences I'm demoing here are pretty subtle. This is a 'real world' demo of how I'm using the Thump to enhance the tone I already had, not some kind of fake thing where I set it up to sound wildly different just for the sake of the video. This is all about the actual tonal advantage I get from it, and if you're listening to this on laptop or phone speakers, you're going to hear precisely none of that. So get your headphones out.
Anyway. hope you enjoy it - the video goes properly weird for about a minute in the middle, before finishing out with a fairly low res full screen shot of my pedals... Sadly, the camera that was recording me playing ran out earlier on (which also means that the musical weirdness at the end of the vid will be harder to fathom, but ain't that always the way? ;) )
But it's the first 7 or 8 minutes that really tell the story of what's going no here... So enjoy!
(Oh, and FET stands for Field Effect Transistor, not Transformer, obviously ;) )

[@pleximanic]

A field-effect transistor (FET) is a type of transistor that uses an electric field to control the flow of current in a semiconductor

[@quiquicampos]

Is your bass active or passive

[@solobasssteve]

good question! It's passive.

[@quiquicampos]

@@solobasssteve oh okay well amazing bass tone and playing i learned alot from this video my Ibanez 6 string sounds horrible i have factory pickups

[@solobasssteve]

​@@quiquicampos ah yes, swapping out the pickups is one option but it may just be that the natural sound of the bass is not what you're looking for!

[@ReverendGuyWallis]

cool hair. great video, i have been trying to decide which one i want to get... the Thump will fit on my board nicely tho... thanks for the video. just subscribed to you :)

[@bassistamalato]

Great stuff steve

[@JeffBrumleyMusic]

Very cool. I've had the Xotic EP Booster for a number of years, primarily as a guitar always-on low boost, but this looks like it has a lot more control as a versatile preamp.

[@kevinreginaldcooke867]

Just awesome. CANNOT wait to get mine

[@perrysar5954]

Steve can I bypass my amps preamp,the gain by plugging the Thump into the return on the back of my amp?...or will I blow up my amp?

[@solobasssteve]

That should work fine if it's an effects loop.

[@duncan-rmi]

field effect transistor. :-)

[@GaryBouch]

thanks for doing this review Steve - really interesting. I bought it this week & used it for the first time (alongside boss bc-1x (which is great) & bb-1x) recording with band from church & straight away got asked how I got my sound. Turned up the internal switch a little since then - helps cuth through pads/synth ableton tracks stuff. Liking the thump a lot.

[@solobasssteve]

That's great news! Very similar to my experience :)

[@danielevanrodriguez9956]

Phenomenal review! I saw on your Instagram post about the "overdrive" control hidden inside the unit itself - where would you say you have it set in this demo, on a scale of 1-10? Is there more overdrive potential than what you've demonstrated with your sound here?

[@solobasssteve]

You can get a LOT more overdrive than this if you crank it. I'm not sure where i have it, but i think it's at half way at most...

[@CNick75]

Hey Steve, off topic but what strings are you using on your Elrick? Thanks in advance!

[@solobasssteve]

Hey! I use Nickel wound Dunlop Superbrights. I love them! :)

[@WillyRaschke]

Thanks for the explanation! I’m no closer to finding the preamp I want! Too many good ones out there! The size of the thump is a big plus. The lack of di is a minus.

[@solobasssteve]

There are always tradeoffs - the MXR Bass Preamp has a DI, sounds great, but doesn't have the internal preamp control...

[@WillyRaschke]

I just found the MXR DI+ used locally and haven’t gotten to try it yet.

[@MarioSouzaLima]

What really interested me was how do you make this send to drone/pad/shime thing at 07:40. I can see you using a volume/expression pedal but didn't get how it holds chords (is it a long shime reverb?) and how it is wired (looks parallel to me). Can you talk/write a little more about it? Great playing by the way, loved your tones and what a great solo, congrats.

[@solobasssteve]

Yup, it's at least two long reverbs - the one I keep turning on and off by hand at the end of the signal chain is the MXR Reverb in 'Pad' mode, and the rest of it is a parallel path within the MOD Duo that I can switch in and out, both of which keep playing when I go back to the clean sound to play over them. The volume pedal is just controlling the level of my bass and is the first thing in the signal chain, between the bass and the MXR Thump :)

[@MarioSouzaLima]

@@solobasssteve Oh thanks, you're a great musician and very kind, glad algorithmics led me to your music.

[@solobasssteve]

@@MarioSouzaLima wonderful! Amazing that the algorithm can do some good sometimes, eh? If you want to dig a little deeper, the rest of the music is at music.stevelawson.net - a quite alarming amount of music available :)

[@ArchimedesWoo]

Nice. ;-)

[@JDeloggia]

What is that red pedal?

[@solobasssteve]

An AMT expression pedal.

[@bigkahuna5445]

@@solobasssteve Really Nice Playing Bro!!!

[@bigkahuna5445]

@@solobasssteve Also what's that thing on your back and what for?

[@solobasssteve]

@@bigkahuna5445 is called a Backbeat and is a wearable subwoofer, so you feel the low end. I love it :)

[@bigkahuna5445]

@@solobasssteve Thanks Steve,never heard of that before.