Just curious, new to bass here. Was told first pedal should be the Sans Amp which I got. Really happy with the sound. I just got Boss GT-1B Processor as my second pedal. Too much? Seems like it would have everything I will ever need as a bass player. LOL Also has a built in looper which I’m excited to try out.
Thoughts?
Almost 900 posts for you to read 
LOL… thx. Understood.
We also have a gear channel on the official Discord, which people talk about gear quite a bit if you wanted to pop into that. It’s new though, but growing quickly, so sometimes there aren’t lots of active users on it. But sometimes there are. Josh was on there yesterday chatting with us for example.
as for thoughts, many of us start similarly with a zoom multieffects, you just chose a slightly different route (and more $$/higher quality) to do it. and most of us eventually moved on to separate pedals. and some of us (like umm me currently) made their way back to multieffects like line 6, or to no effects at all and doing it in the digital realm like howard. so the answer is, is it working for you? if yes, then it’s working.
Nope. Effects are fun!
You have a lot to play with. That Boss GT-1B has a ton of options to keep you occupied.
Will it have everything you ever need? It probably has way more that you will ever need.
Will it have everything you ever want? If you’re like most of us, probably not. 
There is always that next cool pedal right around the corner that sounds like it would be a lot of fun to play with.
hah, exactly
I am also new to Bass, but not to music and guitars.
In my opinion you should just keep it simple in the beginning and learn to play with your Bass and amp settings.
In that vein, my recommendation for a first pedal would be a tuner.
I discovered that the Snark headstock tuner I use for my electric, acoustic/electric and ukulele instruments sometimes struggle with the lower Bass frequencies, and as the many have said in the past “if a guitar player plays an incorrect note most people will not notice but if your Bass is not in tune it will be noticed right away”.
My suggestion for a second pedal would be a looper.
Although not Bass players if you Google Ed Sheerhan (102.7 KIIS-FM: Ed Sheeran Loop Pedal Tutorial with JoJo - YouTube) or ‘James Hill and his imaginary band’ (James Hill, "Billie Jean" With His Imaginary Band - YouTube) you will see what can be accomplished with simple setups. Amazingly James Hill is not even using a looper - Just a Uke and Amp.
Too many players get frustrated with lots of pedals/effects in the end they have discovered they do not need most of these to start out.
In summary I say keep it simple and learn what your Bass straight into an amp can do and learn simple bass lines to play over your favourite songs.
The ‘Beginner To Bad Ass’ course is great for this and will have you playing Bass in no time.
nothing at all wrong with this advice and it is certainly one way to do it. however there also isn’t anything wrong with taking a different route. for instance if buying a screaming dirt pedal and cranking out a full on lemmy sound makes you more excited and motivated to play and learn, than there’s no harm in that. you just don’t HAVE to do that. beginners should know that it is not the effects that make a player, it is the player. and yes, i agree it’s also important to also learn how to get your bass to sound good (both settings wise and technique wise) with a clean sound.
different horses for different courses or whatever that saying is. do what makes you happy.
There’s actually a few serious, serious advantages to learning with a zoom pedal and headphones over (just) a low end bass amp.
First, simplest, is that it has an excellent tuner. You need a tuner and the one in the zooms are easy to use and way better than clip ons.
Second, it has a drum machine. Practicing bass with some kind of timekeeper is a whole lot more effective, at least in my experience. Timing is a big part of being a bassist and there is no substitute to playing with drums.
Well ok, there’s metronomes, but drums are way more fun. Plus IIRC the Zooms have metronomes too anyway.
Third, there’s everything @itsratso brought up around enjoyment.
Fourth, you can get loud. Playing into a Zoom, through its (pretty good!) Ampeg SVT amp sim, and into headphones at a decent volume, is going to sound way more badass than a cheap small bass amp turned way down.
I agree 100%
You’re statement that effects DO NOT make the player is what I was getting at.
yep. agree.
I would go as far as to say as a beginner I think the Zoom pedal is an absolute. Even as an experienced player I’ve found it useful. But for a beginner…
Price! Very affordable. My B3n was like $160 when I got it new…still use it to this day.
Tuner, Drum Machine and Looper. Invaluable tools all.
Effects and amp sims. Reverb, overdrive, synth, octavers, pitch shift, EQ, wah, distortion, tremolo, DI etc…you get to play around with all of them and determine what you like! This will aid you in getting either individual pedals or plugins down the line.
Again, I still use mine.
Yeah, a used B1four, which should be perfectly fine, will run about $50US, probably.
First off I have to say that I know nothing about Zoom or the Boss pedals.
Agreed. My feeling is that if your bass amp has anything less than a 10" speaker your tone is going to suffer. I purchased a Rumble 40 and upgraded within 2 weeks to a Rumble 100 and, in my opinion, the tone is a lot better coming through a 12" speaker. Of course there is also the advantage of the additional headroom on the Rumble 100 that I wanted for small venues.
Isn’t that the truth.
I use the the open source (free) program Hydrogen Drum Machine.
And this is what it is ALL about for me.
I am new to Bass, but not music, and I have seen so many people become frustrated because of add-ons and then quit because of the steep steep learning curves, and they lost interest. This is so sad.
Yeah for sure. The B3n just gives you 3 channels to run 3 effects simultaneously. I like that you can run one effect the drum machine and looper at the same time. Not necessary for sure. The smaller pedals are plenty feature rich too, and if the budget is smaller they are well worth it.
