I bought the bass (well actually, I bought coughs basses) and I bought a Zoom B1Four.
Then I had a noise issue which turned out to be the quality of one the cables. It was new, so I ended up in a a dialogue with the vendor and had to wait for a replacement…and long story short, I ended up playing the bass for these past three weeks ‘clean’.
Today, I received the replacement cable, plugged it all in (no noise ), played around for a bit and then unplugged the Zoom.
I prefer the clean sound!!
Is this normal? Am I a freak in some way that I don’t want some kind of distorted sound, or indeed any other manipulation of what I’m hearing, maybe apart from a bit of chorus?
Not at all. Effects are not necessary for any tunes that don’t specifically require them.
When I use my B1Four, it’s for its cab sims, compression and high pass filters. Period.
But, most of the time, I don’t use my B1Four at all.
I use my Waza Air-Bass system completely clean, with none of its many effects, because I want to hear how my bass actually sounds without anything added.
But everyone is different and effects addiction is real with many a player.
The most important thing is to just play often, with effects or not.
I only like reverb/ delay and wah wah for the funky tune. I don’t do any kind of drives and stopped using compressors for a while now unless I’m recording.
There’s no need for effects unless it enhances the “clean” tone for me.
I always thought distortion was a necessity for metal. I could never find the right level for what we were playinh in my band so I just went clean.
Fast forward to getting a BOSS GT-B1 still prefer no to VERY little distortion. Usually just use chorus and a little reverb for original material. Some of the other effects are fun to play with when experimenting.
nothing wrong with that…you should only use effects if they can do something you want
also fine, maybe no effects needed for you at all, but I would keep in mind the less obvious ‘processing’ effects like compressors or eqs as opposed to the more ‘effecty effects’ that really change your sound
These can be super useful for bass when you want to fit your ‘clean’ bass tone into a full band/mix situation (and maybe even for just playing along with a song)
the key is to set them to enhance your clean tone (basically at the level where you can’t pick they are being used but you notice if they are turned off), not to add a ‘listen to this’ sort of effect
for you something like the zoom is a great thing to have as you can try stuff and learn stuff without blowing $ on effects before you know why you even want/need them
final note: effects work for some e.g. me
I have 8+ ‘always on’ pedals going to get an ‘angry P’ sound and I love it so much it has increased my playing time by maybe an hour each day since I got it going
), played around for a bit and then unplugged the Zoom.
