VOX StompLab 1B Multi-Effects Modeling Pedal for Bass Guitar

Man, this pedal is amazing: the presets that come with it is all you need, I am afraid I’ll make a mess if I make my own presets compared to what it comes with. I love the way my classical electric guitar now. 👍❤️.

...Can Vox make it ANY HARDER to install batteries??Wow- you have to unscrew the entire baseplate, which is attached to two VERY DELICATE WIRES.And Heaven help you if you lose one of them...This is where prolly most of the reviews about failure of this device come from, I believe.WHEN YOU INSTALL BATTERIES, ALWAYS LIFT THE BASEPLATE COVER OFF CAREFULLY!!!OR YOU'LL PULL THE WIRES OFF THE CIRCUIT BOARD!But, what I like about it is it's EXTREMELY STABLE which is great for us older players.EDITJust FYI; this pedal has no wah sweep effect AFAICT... It's for gain/volume effects only...

This will convert a basic practice amp into a modeling amp. I'd say out of the 100 presets in this thing - about half of them are actually usable. For me, this turned an almost "free" bundled 10W practice amp I had into more or less the equivalent of my 40W Peavey VIP II modeling amp. Once I figured out which presets I liked - it's easy enough to switch between them, and they do sound great.On the negative side - I have no idea what the controls do (beyond the main "mode" selector switch) and the manual did not help me. YouTube was not much help either. I'm sure if I understood how amps worked better the controls would make more since to me... but for now, I have no idea what they do or how to properly use them. I only know on some presets the foot pedal seems to do various stuff and on others it does not. Same for the two chicken head knobs. I just stick them in the middle setting and leave them alone... a I leave the pedal depressed.I suppose if you knew what you were doing you could use this thing on a stage to quickly change between a lot of great sounds, inexpensively (a lot cheaper than a bunch of pedals). But for me - I can't figure out how to do that.

Bought my first Stomplab in 2013 and couple years of heavy use, a button broke. So many new multi effects, I bought 3 others over the years, and came back to Stomplab. Why? PLENTY OF REASONS, but first is SOUND. The others have a gritty "digital" grayness, hard to get clean high chiming frequencies, although I know that sampling at 44,000 time a second SHOULD model frequencies to our 20,000 Hz upper hearing limit, but it don't. PITCH SLIDE: A recent multi-Effect could only slide one note at a time, STOMPLAB SLIDES THE WHOLE POLYPHONIC CHORD, set to whatever frequency from octave below to octave above (plus a detune), controlled by the pedal. Or take DELAY: other effects remove the delay when you use the pedal to reduce the delay or reverb mix, very UNNATURAL. Stomplab keeps reverberating and echoing for a natural die down. THE COMPRESSOR REALLY WORKS!!! The other, at least one other, didn't. The number of effects, limited compared to other multi-effects, also LIBERATES you from endless trial and error. Visualize the sound you want, and you can get close (or better). AMPLIFIER EMULATION: A good amp model (depending on amp chosen) should respond to the guitar's volume changes (with cleaner to more distortion) and that happens with some of the Stomplab's emulations. I have not found that to be true in the others. Vox Stomplab also has some space-age ring modulator and noisy amp models that the others cannot get close to! Really strange fuzz-wah craziness, easily NOT harmonic and crazy noise, yet can still produce interesting music! I thoroughly examined all amp models for low noise and volume-responsiveness, and found about nine that I'm happy with. Very solid construction; no failure-prone exotic little plastic buttons that trashed one of the other multi-effects. OK, so the battery access by unscrewing the four feet on the under-panel REALLY sucks, so use batteries as the backup for power-cable failure. Ten User-programmable presets, and 90 factory presets (useful for instructional purposes) unfortunately no way to store the volume on presets, so be careful at high volume. FOUR EQ settings per voice, which I set trebly (sometimes for wah response) to control from the guitar. Why pay double for a confusing, gritty sounding *new* digital guitar effect with ugly boring drum sounds and a difficult looper (one other multi-effect linked the drum tempo to the looper BY MEASURE COUNT, and that was GREAT! Modification: I took the right knob off to avoid my wah-pedal foot bumping it and changing the output volume! The knob-stem works fine.

This is a robust little multi-effects unit with an expression pedal that can be assigned to various parameters. For me it’s usually the wah. Vox were the originators of the wah pedal in the 60s and their iteration in this mini pedal is full of character and is tweakable to give the range and tones you want. The default setting is fine.But obviously it’s more than a wah pedal. There are also 36 amp models covering classic, modern and boutique amps. I’ve not had the experience of playing through all of these amp heads and combos in real life so can’t attest to the accuracy of these models, but I’m surprised and impressed how “amp-like” these models are to play.They respond to picking dynamics and guitar volume/tone adjustments just like a real tube amp will – play softer and you get a cleaner sound, play harder and you get a gradually increasing gain with more harmonic complexity. Vox have done this better than the various ZOOM and Behringer units I’ve been using for years – it really is a massive improvement on what I’ve been used to.It’s important to set the global output from this box to match what you’re feeding it into but this is relatively easily adjusted with a dial and a few button presses – i.e. if your output is a direct line to headphones or a recording console, or if it’s to a particular type of amp (basically Fender or Marshall type combos or a bigger stack) and the output tonality is adjusted accordingly.There’s one cool retro chickenhead knob to target a genre of music (blues, jazz, metal, rock, ballad etc) with 10 preset combinations in each bank. You can move around these presets with the two sturdy foot switches and there are two more chickenhead knobs to adjust parameters of each patch.As well as the amp models there are also many modulation settings replicating various choruses, pitch-shifters, delays, reverbs etc.But this is a small unit and some sacrifices have to be made – storing your own combinations and parameters into the 20 available user spaces takes some working out given the 2-digit LED display. It’s not as informative and intuitive as the ZOOM G5 unit for example.Another compromise it took me a while to work out is that you can’t have an overdrive/distortion/fuzz effect going into a chosen amp model as they’re all in the same bank. So you can’t choose a Big Muff into a1959 Fender Bassman 4x12 for example. But the Big Muff on its own sounds fine and isn’t a problem.But overall I’m impressed. Great amp models as long as you adjust the global output settings to what you’re playing into; very responsive and musical; sturdy build; small size; great effects; 20 user-defined preset patches. Great quality for a good price

I don't think I've been as disappointed in a purchase as this one, for quite some time.It sure is a sturdy unit, you don't get many solid metal guitar pedals. It should stand up to years of abuse.The presets are junk though. Utter junk, I can't see more than maybe two or three you'd ever consider using without heavily editing them. It doesn't sound like any actual bass players have been involved in their creation.Speaking of editing, that is a complete pain 'thanks' to the stupid two-digit LED screen.Another major annoyance is, if you have turned up the master volume, every time you click to a new effect the volume goes back down and you have to turn it back uo. So dumb.And if you have a guitar/pick-ups that hum etc when you're not playing a note, this unit does not help you one bit. Unless you have the noise reduction on full you will hear noise whenever you have a very brief delay between notes played, but with noise reduction on full this unit constantly cuts out the signal altogether while you are even hitting notes.Terrible, my biggest waste of fifty quid in years.

The compressor used is MXR Red Compressor, it has Fuzz Face what Hendrix used, pedal a bit small but it fits well in my donner pocket bag £50 pedal board which is an extra pocket. I have 2 pedal boards and this is a pedal board. The actual presets can be downloaded from a Facebook channel, they cannot say which devices are emulated except the VOX amps officially.Though my blackbox reloaded does display the actual amps emulated and not a number, but that had a very bad pedal and also very large, I prefer this small pedal in contrast. You cannot change the order of the pedals if you want to create your own preset. But pedals work better in their natural order, also this includes a tuner which works and a noise gate.But Amazon description is wrong it not need an AC adapter, but DC as it does accept batteries which are DC. I have tested the normal pedal power supply and it works. You do not need a special power supply for this. The preset of the U2/David Glimour Another Brick In The Wall can be found on the net, though it cannot be downloaded and patched from a computer as other models can you can add the variables manually.Also there is a YouTube channel where you can hear different presets, but you have to add them manually.It is mono but many fx units are, even the boss ME-80 seems to be, it does have stereo but I think it is mono stereo.But have this and create your own pedal board which is fun, it does not have to be either or. This is the real deal. It will not replace a personal pedal board, but it will sound as good but less personal.Preset 89 gain 4.8 Guitar humbucker bridge position, pedal pressed down. For I can't get no satisfaction - rolling stones, also works Bridge Of Sighs - Robin Tower.Preset 76 gain 5.0. Guitar in neck position with humbucker. Works for Waking Up - Elastica and The Clash - London Calling, also London Calling solo which was played backwards in the recording.For Ziggy Stardust use preset 76 which uses a fixed wah pedal as originally used. I used gain at 1.3. My guitar positioning was middle on a HSH guitar.More Bowie stuff:Preset 99 gain on 9.1,stomplab pedal halve way. Guitar on a head position using a humbucker with my guitar tone lowered by 2 notches:FameGolden YearsSoul LoveBreaking GlassThe prettiest starSound and visionBewley brothersAlso works for New Dawn Fades, joy division and moby version which is used in the Al pacino film Heat.

I originally bought this as a hopeful replacement for my Valvetronix AD120VT which is fantastic but, at 15 years old, is beginning to get expensive to repair but I'm disappointed.Firstly, the presets are absolutely terrible. I would have thought that anyone buying the pedal or trying it out would obviously first check out the presets (there are 90 or more!). Very few of them are usable. This is a serious own goal.Secondly, editing your own sounds and patches would appear to be real challenge and it's very easy to get lost and end up losing everything you are trying to do.Thirdly the expression pedal is too small and causes real problems if you touch it inadvertently when trying to skip between patches as it can alter your sound dramatically if it is switched on.Overall the unit is too small, badly designed and not user friendly. I have decided to keep it as I like the phaser and chorus tones but it doesn't come remotely close to the sounds available in the original valvetronix series.

When I first got this unit I thought it was okay. Reasonable build quality and it has lots of pre-set effects with enough memory to programme 20 effects of your own creation.Having now used it in performance, with effects programed for each song, I find it just too difficult to use.No problems with the programming, I found very good advice on line, far better than the included handbook. The problem for me is that I found it very difficult to switch between effects in the middle of songs that call for multiple effects.I actually found it much easier to use my old pedal board with it's budget Behringer pedals with their nice chunky foot switches (basically Boss clones).