Your droping of pedals is fully understandable to me.
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I can’t see myself dropping the Halberd anytime soon as I just can’t seem to find anything that captures that kind of vibe. Same for the Model FeT, it just ties it all together despite being really subtle for low gain.
Finally the Jad Freer Capo which is just an excellent preamp (4 separate preamps technically) with pre/post DIs and FX Loops. It’s great for making quick adjustments when needed to compensate for room stuff.
While I haven’t got anything that would fool anyone in a direct A/B comparison with the Longsword, I’ve managed to get something that is tonally in the same ballpark. Perhaps a little more fizz at the higher end but a little more thickness in the bass thanks to the fuzz with bias I’ve blended in.
Really interesting experimenting with them.
That being said I’ve found the process much harder than with the GT1000, partly because its so quick to flick through different options. I think a big factor is that they’re instantly recognisable as they’re mostly modelled after a specific pedal like RAT or a Blues Driver etc. That’s also part of why I lost interest ironically as it all felt very generic.
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No update’s really except to say I’m really enjoying some of the tones I’m getting. Got a pretty solid bass fx board and guitar with the JCVM modeller.
I think things have settled down enough that I’m gonna take the time to assign all the most useful settings to the knobs.
One thing that I couldn’t see was a way to save instrument level profiles or anything like on the Boss GT1000 which is a shame. I often jump between a few different basses and my guitar which all have a wide range of output levels, being able to save presets for each instrument would be super handy!
Finally started playing with some more modulation and delays, having a load of fun. Will post a definitive guide at some point to my favourite effects and most useful utility plugins.
Also have a disaster area midi baby 3 on it’s way, eventually I’ll add an expression pedal to the mix too 
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You could :
- make the Gain - MOD Audio the 1st plugin in your pedalboards
- save one preset of the gain for each instrument
- make the list of presets accessible with a rotary know
What do you think ?
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Yeah that makes sense although I guess you’re not really capitalising on the signal to noise ratio of the input etc. Very good workaround though!
Just configure the input for the hottest output and then just boost the lower output ones.
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Awesome! Didn’t realise that was how the profiles worked on the Dwarf, thought it was more for managing pedalboards etc!
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Got my midi baby 3 this morning and just got it all wired up. It’s a little tight for space, not sure why the back switches are lowered as it makes hitting them super difficult.
Next gotta try and work out how to set up a tap tempo if possible!
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I was in a rush!
Nic e board again!
LOVE reading this journal!
Some interesting things going on in this tread
I once started a similar journal as well and I add stuff occasionally: LievenDV’s Dwarf journal
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Small approach change. Started to become a little aware of the latency, especially as I’ve got it set to use channel 1>2 as an FX send which essentially doubles any delay.
I also have no calling for anything outside of the current drives/preamp analog pedals in the band for gigging so the Dwarf was just adding more complexity and potential point of failure.
Lastly using the channels as an fx send made it useless as portable as you can’t tweak the routing to the headphones etc. I’d have to get additional adapters etc.
So, now its on it’s own board. I’ve built an fx send into my main board so I can use the Dwarf for delays and modulation etc. I can easily use it for guitar, now with the option to have stereo out.
Works much better and means I can gig without any baked in latency but still have the option to play around when I’m at home.
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Honestly I’m still not in a position where I can replicate the tone of the Halberd of Model FeT (not pictured) in particular via the Dwarf alone. That’s not to say it can’t be done, just that I’ve not really gotten it locked in. I think I should be able to get a nice AIDA-X model of the Capo though which is by far one of the best bass preamps I’ve ever tried.
I think diving in to the deep end and trying to create some patches entirely on the Dwarf without falling back to my analog pedals will help force me to learn the nuances of all the different offerings. So far I’ve managed to get a good tone to fill the role of the Longsword, it’d fail an A/B comparison but has a similar feel for sure.
I’ll be honest I still find the library a little daunting, theres a lot of stuff and most of it lacks context as to what to expect. I’m getting there slowly but if I wanted something like a RAT sound, I’d probably have to audition about 20 drives before I found something in the ballpark which gets time consuming (albeit pretty fun).
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Thank you for the through explanation @mrdinsdale
Proper sorting of plugins is a challenge we still need to overcome.
Looking forward to your next iterations 
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Yeah its a really tough problem to solve right!
Yeah should be good forcing myself to rely on the Dwarf entirely rather than falling back on the Capo etc.
It’ll be nice to create to have some pedalboards I can actually share too rather than all being based on a mono signal chain with fx loop that wouldn’t work for others.
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I like that Thread. It is informative and it is like a good book with a good story. It is fun to watch the progress. As well the pedal boards are really fine!
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Found an interesting bug.
Creating a bass pedalboard with a clean and dirty channel with a switch:
Despite being on the clean channel the distortion pedals are still in the signal path.
Update: deleting and readding fixed it
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@mrdinsdale - do you ever run run both in parrallel, and blend in the amount of dirt you want in with your clean tone? Would be curious to see if your setup would change in terms of modules used (obviously the switching would need to change)
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Yeah I’ve had a play with clean blends. As with my analog stuff I’ll faff around lot’s trying to get it all balanced only to decide I liked it better without.
I really like the sound of the blend on the new MBD-3 pedal or Lusithand Ground n Pound, there’s a little extra magic going on there with some EQ/LPF and maybe some light compression or something that helps mesh them together nicely. It fattens the sound without seeming like two separate signals if that makes sense.
I’ve tried to do some stuff like that on the dwarf and it sounded great, the downside is that it’s just more complexity. You need to spend some time thinking it through if you want to use it live and have to make some tweaks on the fly etc.
I think you can get some great tones blending different drives and playing with clean blends though, not sure if I have any pedalboards saved with clean blends set up.
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