So I purchased my Yamaha bass last year and decided its time to take it in and get some new strings (yes its been a long time and I am learning Bass so wasn’t taking it with priority) when to my surprise the store I purchased it from is gone. I mean the sign saying “last day July 14th” was a miss on my side as if I had known I would have gone in to purchase a ton of toys.
What are some good strings to get? I play a little bit of everything. Jazz, Rock, Metal, etc…
I figure it can’t be that much different than guitars and mando’s which I have done both.
Second question would be what is a good 1st effect to purchase. I have a basic amp and was looking for something to just smooth the noise and make it sound a tad cooler.
I appreciate any advice and love the forums all…Be Hairy Do Good…(Beardo here)…so lets “Play Bass and Do Good”!
Strings and effects are both cans of worms. Lots of options and it all comes down to it depends on what you are looking for.
For effects, a Zoom B1 multi effects pedal is a good starting place for multiple effects in an inexpensive package. It’s good, but a place to decide what you want before spending money on more expensive “great” stuff. An alternative is a Behringer, who have a line of knockoffs. I have one of their BD-21s
Strings is highly subjective and you’ll get a lot of answers to. D’Addario EXLs (nickel wounds) are a really good string, Good place to start. But to really answer the question, what kind of music do you play? What do you want to sound like? What’s your bass?
I can’t comment on strings, as was said above, it can be a bit subjective.
Regarding effects, I’d echo @Wombat-metal‘s point regarding the Zoom B1four. That was the first one I bought - it’s cheap, can be used for silent practice and gives you an introduction. It’s also got drum patterns, which can be useful.
If thinking separates, then the standard answer is a tuner (they are super useful as it makes tuning, errrr, easy ) then a compressor (to help even out your playing). This is what I did, followed by a chorus, a phaser and a delay; all to fatten out and shape the tone a bit. I was then looking at some kind of overdrive / distortion, but brothers and sisters, I saw the light and had a revelation ….
I bought a Hotone Ampero One. This is a multi effects pedal that is a step up from the Zoom, but probably not as good as a Line 6 HX Stomp - pricing wise, it’s cheaper than the Line 6 unit, but a chunk more expensive than the Zoom. The thing is that this pedal has loads in it. It’s super easy to create patches and you can save more patches than I currently need. It can be used for silent practice and also a recording interface. It also sounds great!! All my separates are under the desk in my office - they really need to be sold as I don’t use them at all!
Another point, I’m a great fan of second hand. Everything I have purchased has been second hand, apart from cables and the Zoom. Everything has been at 2/3rds to 1/2 of retail.
Oh, back to strings…don’t buy second hand, pre-used strings
I said this before but there are great strings that fits your needs in every budget. Most of the time more expensive set are predictable and good representation of what they are.
Luckily, at least for me the tone that I like can be found on the most common strings and it’s a toss up between the slinky and the Fender 45s
It’s awesome that you are familiar with guitar strings already so you know all of the brands and the different types rounds, flats, tape wound. Although, it seems like 95% of electric guitarist play round wound. I’m a noob in that world but I really love the flat wound, which is the opposite of this world.
Like @Wombat-metal suggested a multi effect is an easy start, if you are a guitar player you’d probably have more than a few effects already many would work here as well.
My rank of importance goes like this
Preamp pedal
Compressor
Reverb/ Delay/ Chorus
Autowah.
Can you explain the function of a preamp a little?
It’s not really relevevant to me, as I do everything in software anyway, but I wonder if it just amplifies and possibly sets EQ as well?
In my case I can max out volume up to distorion easily with my basses, up to and beyons distortion, there would be no need for a preamp, right?
I am sure there are others who can better explain the physics/electronics behind this, but - broadly speaking - a pre-amp defines the main character of your tone by doing “stuff” to your signal, such as adding (or removing) harmonics/overtone content, attenuating certain parts of the spectrum and reenforcing others, and introducing (slight) distortions and/or clippings etc as the signal is amplified.
This is what people refer to as “giving a warm (or cold) tone” or “adding some grit” etc. E.g., vacuum tubes use a different principle than solid state electronics in their way of amplifying and that results in different tonal characteristics.
In essence, however a circuit was designed and the components it includes will affect a signal in different ways, resulting in different “tones”. What you like or not like about these is entirely up to you and needs to be heard and/or experimented with.
I guess most pre-amps have a few essential knobs: gain (how hard you “push” the signal); some EQ; blend (to mix the “processed” and non-processed signal).
This all from a guy who had to learn this all slowly (and is still trying to wrap his head around all that). As mentioned, I am sure others have more detailed insight.
In fact this was a very good explanation, in the sense of: I don’t need a pre-amp
I play either dry or go through VST software effects anyway (except in the park, where I use my beloved Boss Katana Go).
If I understand it correctly, anything that can be done with the “colouring” side of a pre-amp, I can do with VSTs.
The amping is not necessary as both my PUs are quite hot.
Yes, there are VSTs that simulate existing hardware circuits (i.e., famous pre-amps, or the pre-amp parts of famous amps) to produce “similar” results; whether they succeed or not is up to your own judgement.
I am sure your use of “anything” here can be debated ad infinitum (it’s really a philosophical debate), but for most practical purposes, I’d say you are right.
Hardware afficionados will probably argue that, e.g., the behavior of a vacuum tube cannot be properly emulated by software; probably because there is an inherent randomness/fuzziness in the way such a tube works as well as unpredictable feedback processes.
Anyway, to summarize (and potentially simplify too much): the pre-amp circuit is what makes an Ampeg sound like an Ampeg, and a GK sound like a GK and so on. If you own a transparent amp, but want to add (on occasion) a bit of Ampeg warmth, then a pre-amp pedal is one option to do that.
Some pedals actually have a tube included.
Some pedals use solid state electronics to emulate a (proprietary) circuit.
Some pedals use a DSP and an algorithm.
You need to remember that if you have an active bass, it’s already got a preamp on board, generally enabling cut / boost to the bass (mids) and treble. I put mids in brackets as one of my basses - the Spector only has bass and treble knobs, where as the Ibanez and Dingwall enable shaping of all three.
I have a separate, external preamp, that also includes a compressor, but I’ve used it once and then couldn’t be arsed with it (needs to be sold). The idea behind that is that you bypass the a normal amp’s preamp and just plug straight into the power amp, which can be done on my Orange amp (which I also never use ), or lug straight into a desk using a DI out.
The majority of the tone people ascribe to amps comes from the preamp. In addition to the EQ controls, the preamp circuits themselves impart tone coloring, often large amounts.
And yes, you can get these in software in the form of amp sims.
I made my Blackstar travel bass active, the other two are passive, but hot.
Had an ESP with high/mid/low tone knobs, but that just drove me to fumbling my knobs all the time
I am happy with volume and low pass now - in fact I find it too much effort to find the right balance between P and J nowadays.
As for the rest: with BIAS F/X, Amplitube and TH-U I have hundreds of effects, amps and other things I also don’t understand. Spent some days to go through all (thousands!) presets. In the beginning I was like COOL … COOL … COOL … (several hours later) … cool … eh, cool … (several hours later) … great … good … ok … (several hours later) … when does it f#cking end!!!
And then @howard made some remark somewhere that compression is the most important. Tested that … and use the D16 frontier compression plugin only now…
Got the LA-2A Tube Compressor first, I think it was your recommedation too.
I liked it.
But the Frontier is “self adaptive” and it feels like it does more to the signal without me having to config much.
It does, but that’s not usually the primary purpose of compression.
I like Frontier a lot, but as a limiter. A compressor’s function is more subtle. I would really suggest learning about how to and why to use compression before jumping in to making a heavily tone coloring limiter your main compressor.
I did notice that it does strange stuff sometimes - when I attack a string too hard, for example.
I will get into compression stuff more for my next cover. It may seem strange to you, but even with three parameters to change, I have trouble finding the right setting in a compressor…
An onboard preamp is usually just a transparent unity gain preamp with EQ.
That’s not the main reason to buy a bass preamp pedal; you want those to bring more, add some neutral-EQ tonal qualities, often with a bit of compression, and also overdrive well to provide a light, musical overdriven quality. Some have great distortion too. The better ones render amps tonally unnecessary and function as excellent amp sims themselves.
Let me first say that @joergkutter eloquently put it beautifully.
Yes you can do anything and everything on the software side but 2 things for me, I prefer tactile feeling of turning something but that can be waved at home.
Next is just the logistic of having to take the laptop and set up at a gig along with the main laptop that my keyboard player is running. It’s just a hassle to do when a pedal can get it done with such little space and not to mention durability and reliability in a live situation.
Another thing that worth mentioning, on your onboard active preamp can be difficult to deal with depending on the type of pickup you have. If you have passive pickups and active preamp like most of the active system then you have to deal with the environment lighting situation and interference. Active pickups like EMG are much easier to deal with that’s why I will take along an EMG equipped bass to every gig, just in case.
As I was saying, if you have passive pickup and active preamp, when you turn up the treble, you may get some kind of hiss drop it down to center and use the preamp pedal to boost the treble and you don’t have the hiss, at least on my Providence. That’s such a clean pedal.
) then a compressor (to help even out your playing). This is what I did, followed by a chorus, a phaser and a delay; all to fatten out and shape the tone a bit. I was then looking at some kind of overdrive / distortion, but brothers and sisters, I saw the light and had a revelation …. 
