Bass pedal board
May 29, 2021 12:36 PM Subscribe
I am starting to try to put together a pedal board for my bass with which to tour and record. More inside:
Currently I am very happy with my 10-pedal guitar pedal board, but my bass board is lacking. I have a JHS lime compressor so fed and that’s it. I like the bass sounds of Flea on his more melodic songs and Nikolai Fraiture from the Strokes. Eric from Sublime has a good tone too. I want to have a little bit of diversity. Some brands I’ve especially liked of guitar pedals: Deusenberg, JHS. I want to add like 5 pedals or so.
Currently I am very happy with my 10-pedal guitar pedal board, but my bass board is lacking. I have a JHS lime compressor so fed and that’s it. I like the bass sounds of Flea on his more melodic songs and Nikolai Fraiture from the Strokes. Eric from Sublime has a good tone too. I want to have a little bit of diversity. Some brands I’ve especially liked of guitar pedals: Deusenberg, JHS. I want to add like 5 pedals or so.
We're going to need a little more to go on. What kinds of sounds are you looking for? Are you using an amp, or going straight to the PA? IF you're using an amp, do you like the sound you get from your amp, or do you need to alter the basic tone?
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:11 PM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by jonathanhughes at 1:11 PM on May 29, 2021 [1 favorite]
The bass-cats on the internets discussions are all over the Darkglass B7K bass pedals. And the SansAmp Bass Driver DI. The rest of flavours is kinda what you like...
posted by ovvl at 5:17 PM on May 29, 2021
posted by ovvl at 5:17 PM on May 29, 2021
Pedals I have seen bass players (at all levels, amateurs to touring pros to Famous People) use, in order:
1) nothing (by FAR the most common.)
2) tuner (less common now that, like, you can get clip tuners for free when you buy 5 sets of strings or whatever.)
3) overdrive/distortion (depending on the purpose. If it's an "always on" pedal meant to add a little growl to their sound it'll probably be a "bass distortion" pedal, which tend to do some frequency splitting inside the pedal, letting the low end come through clean and only distorting the higher frequencies. If it's meant to be used only for certain parts of tunes it could be anything - a Rat, a Tube Screamer, a Big Muff, a Boss DS1, any of a million boutique pedals, etc etc etc.)
4) tie: a preamp/tone pedal (like the SansAmp or those DarkGlass pedals) or a compressor. May serve the same purpose as an overdrive, adding some growl to the tone in general. Compression often happens at the sound engineer end more than the player's end, so compressor pedals aren't as common as you might think.
That's mostly it.
Under pretty rare but not unheard of:
5) fuzz, if they're looking for something more gnarly or extreme than an overdrive or distortion.
6) if they're covering or influenced by some of the classic funk tunes, a phaser and/or an auto-wah (a.k.a. envelope filter.)
After this you're getting into folks building pedalboards (or using multi-effect pedals or complex rack systems) because they're emulating tones and effects that happened in the recorded versions of the songs. So it depends a lot on the tunes they're playing. (Which is, IMO, one of the reasons trying to cite the tones of famous players as a guide to buying pedals is kind of impractical - Flea and Fraiture and whoever have access to literally thousands of dollars of gear and tons of time to experiment with all sorts of signal routing and techs to help with complex setups. Heck, I'd argue that Flea's tone has more to do with his Modulus and Music Man Stingray basses than anything else.)
So, yeah, the context is pretty relevant here. If you're writing and playing and recording your own tunes (solo or as a member of an original band), go nuts, try every pedal you can get your hands on and then figure out how to get those sounds (or close approximations) live with a handful of pedals. If you're doing cover tunes or are "just a bass player" in a band where someone else leads the band your pedal needs are probably going to be pretty minimal (like, not even 5 pedals, just a tuner and a boost/preamp/overdrive) or very specific (like, you need an envelope filter for that one P-funk song.)
And if you're actually going to be gigging live as a bass player the first thing I'd suggest you buy is a better-than-average DI, like the Radial Pro DI. Live sound techs will default to using just a DI on the bass. Most amps these days have one built in, and they're usually fine, but I've seen a LOT of them die while the rest of the amp still works fine. So if it dies you've got a backup. Or maybe your amp doesn't have one. Either way, the quality and condition of a club's house DI's tends to be, well, highly variable, so having your own on the road is a good idea.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:38 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
1) nothing (by FAR the most common.)
2) tuner (less common now that, like, you can get clip tuners for free when you buy 5 sets of strings or whatever.)
3) overdrive/distortion (depending on the purpose. If it's an "always on" pedal meant to add a little growl to their sound it'll probably be a "bass distortion" pedal, which tend to do some frequency splitting inside the pedal, letting the low end come through clean and only distorting the higher frequencies. If it's meant to be used only for certain parts of tunes it could be anything - a Rat, a Tube Screamer, a Big Muff, a Boss DS1, any of a million boutique pedals, etc etc etc.)
4) tie: a preamp/tone pedal (like the SansAmp or those DarkGlass pedals) or a compressor. May serve the same purpose as an overdrive, adding some growl to the tone in general. Compression often happens at the sound engineer end more than the player's end, so compressor pedals aren't as common as you might think.
That's mostly it.
Under pretty rare but not unheard of:
5) fuzz, if they're looking for something more gnarly or extreme than an overdrive or distortion.
6) if they're covering or influenced by some of the classic funk tunes, a phaser and/or an auto-wah (a.k.a. envelope filter.)
After this you're getting into folks building pedalboards (or using multi-effect pedals or complex rack systems) because they're emulating tones and effects that happened in the recorded versions of the songs. So it depends a lot on the tunes they're playing. (Which is, IMO, one of the reasons trying to cite the tones of famous players as a guide to buying pedals is kind of impractical - Flea and Fraiture and whoever have access to literally thousands of dollars of gear and tons of time to experiment with all sorts of signal routing and techs to help with complex setups. Heck, I'd argue that Flea's tone has more to do with his Modulus and Music Man Stingray basses than anything else.)
So, yeah, the context is pretty relevant here. If you're writing and playing and recording your own tunes (solo or as a member of an original band), go nuts, try every pedal you can get your hands on and then figure out how to get those sounds (or close approximations) live with a handful of pedals. If you're doing cover tunes or are "just a bass player" in a band where someone else leads the band your pedal needs are probably going to be pretty minimal (like, not even 5 pedals, just a tuner and a boost/preamp/overdrive) or very specific (like, you need an envelope filter for that one P-funk song.)
And if you're actually going to be gigging live as a bass player the first thing I'd suggest you buy is a better-than-average DI, like the Radial Pro DI. Live sound techs will default to using just a DI on the bass. Most amps these days have one built in, and they're usually fine, but I've seen a LOT of them die while the rest of the amp still works fine. So if it dies you've got a backup. Or maybe your amp doesn't have one. Either way, the quality and condition of a club's house DI's tends to be, well, highly variable, so having your own on the road is a good idea.
posted by soundguy99 at 4:38 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: I will be using them for both live shows and studio recording. And the sound I’m going for is that of the musicians I listed. I don’t know how to explain it. More melodic.
posted by jitterbug perfume at 12:44 PM on May 31, 2021
posted by jitterbug perfume at 12:44 PM on May 31, 2021
Response by poster: Can I use guitar pedals on a bass?
posted by jitterbug perfume at 12:44 PM on May 31, 2021
posted by jitterbug perfume at 12:44 PM on May 31, 2021
Response by poster: Oh - I’m using an amp. Two Rock solid state or Marshall tube.
posted by jitterbug perfume at 1:47 PM on May 31, 2021
posted by jitterbug perfume at 1:47 PM on May 31, 2021
Can I use guitar pedals on a bass?
Some you can, and some you can't. A big issue with guitar pedals is that most will cut off some of that sweet low end from your bass, especially on things like distortion pedals. One way to be able to use traditional guitar pedals is to use them with a companion blender pedal like this paramix. It lets you output a mix of the clean bass tone with the distorted/effected signal allowing you to maintain some low-end.
posted by drezdn at 5:05 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Some you can, and some you can't. A big issue with guitar pedals is that most will cut off some of that sweet low end from your bass, especially on things like distortion pedals. One way to be able to use traditional guitar pedals is to use them with a companion blender pedal like this paramix. It lets you output a mix of the clean bass tone with the distorted/effected signal allowing you to maintain some low-end.
posted by drezdn at 5:05 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Yeah, there's no technical reason you can't use guitar pedals on bass - heck, a lot if not most of the effected bass sounds you hear are made with "guitar" pedals - but as drezdn says some pedals will affect the tone of the bass in ways some people don't like.
So quite a few "bass" pedals basically have a simple "blender" circuit built into the pedal, which allows the player to dial in a certain amount of un-effected or "dry" sound of the bass to the final sound.
For example, the Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive pedal has a "balance" control, or the Boss CEB-3 Bass Chorus has an "effects level" control. And the manual of the chorus pedal suggests that there might be a little bit of frequency splitting going on right from the beginning, where only the higher frequencies get sent to the "chorus" part of the effect circuit, leaving the lower bass tones dry all the time. Which makes sense, as the chorus effect will be most notable in the higher frequencies.
But, sure, you could try a regular "guitar" overdrive or chorus or whatever pedal on your bass, you won't damage anything.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:09 AM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
So quite a few "bass" pedals basically have a simple "blender" circuit built into the pedal, which allows the player to dial in a certain amount of un-effected or "dry" sound of the bass to the final sound.
For example, the Boss ODB-3 Bass Overdrive pedal has a "balance" control, or the Boss CEB-3 Bass Chorus has an "effects level" control. And the manual of the chorus pedal suggests that there might be a little bit of frequency splitting going on right from the beginning, where only the higher frequencies get sent to the "chorus" part of the effect circuit, leaving the lower bass tones dry all the time. Which makes sense, as the chorus effect will be most notable in the higher frequencies.
But, sure, you could try a regular "guitar" overdrive or chorus or whatever pedal on your bass, you won't damage anything.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:09 AM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
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posted by jitterbug perfume at 12:37 PM on May 29, 2021