Lot of wisdom in that. I have a pedal board which does’t see much use these days. I am playing mostly passive basses into my Fender 100.
I have decided to focus on my bass skills right now, will get back to other stuff later. But that’s my journey, everyone’s is different.
What kind of music do you like to play?
I’ve bought and sold a lot of pedals, including two Zooms. I’ve sold all of my pedals for now but I also use more effects now than I ever have; I have just moved to software for them out of convenience (and price/performance).
My takes on the Zoom units:
Caveat, I am all about sound processing and effects and don’t mind putting in the time to learn things like the multieffectors. If that’s not your thing, YMMV.
Also: not all of the patches are useless. The very first one when you turn on the unit is a very usable patch with a SansAmp soundalike and an amp sim. That’s enough right there for 80% of bass players.
Mostly “rock”. Classic rock, alternative rock, some light metal, some blues, some reggae and reggae-adjacent stuff (Madness, Matisyahu, etc.) Not so big on jazz or funk.
Okay, so mostly what you may need is some form of distortion which you might be able to get from your amp. What kind of amp do you have?
Other than that, you don’t need any pedals. Maybe a tuner.
I play with pedals because I think it’s fun. I like playing with the different sounds and seeing how they all work together. I like the knobs and foot switches, and I like plugging in everything, and unplugging everything, and then plugging it all back in. Also, I wanted the experience of putting together a pedal board.
If all that sounds fun, then start buying pedals. Be warned, though, it gets expensive quick.
I spent more on each of those things than a Zoom B1 Four. All together, I could have bought an HX Stomp (like Zoom but every aspect of it is top of the line) and still had plenty of money left over.
It all depends on what you want out of it. If you’re not sure, maybe start with the Zoom and see what it has to offer. If you’re not into it, it should be easy enough to sell.
@Koldunya Yes, those are really exceptional looking pedals.
This has some good sounds from a Bass VI
Gear shuffle, round 3: Line6 Bass Pod Pro.
Wait, @howard got a multi-effector? Wat? 
I am not planning to record with this (though it seems like a nice preamp - very little noise). I got this because I want good amp and cab sim for use while jamming out, if I don’t want to boot up the computer. This unit is pretty old and the effects seem only so-so but I won’t use them; the cab and amp sims sound great, and you know this because @terb uses them on every cover he does.
Since this thing is ancient I got it for less than a good cab/amp sim pedal costs. Total cost was about $40, because…
…in addition to being ancient (as multieffectors go), it’s also damaged. Someone broke off its sync and input selectors, so it was being sold as junk.
This should be a really easy repair. I checked and those switches are on their own breakaway board with nothing else on it. About as easy as such repairs go. Fun project for this weekend or next.
Anyway, these are nice because they are a rack unit with lots of ins and outs from the back. So I am just going to run a mixer insert to it (kind of a per-track effects loop for mixers) and just unplug it when I don’t want it while recording.
Fun fun fun. Thanks @terb for recommending these so highly, seems like a really nice unit from back then.
what a beauty
Yeah it’s otherwise in totally perfect condition 
only took about five minutes to get the breakaway board out.
The unit is nice and clean and easy to work on.
In situ, nice modular connector going back to the main board.
Just need to order a couple mini toggle switches.
that’s perfect ! will be a really easy fix
Yeah, it doesn’t get much easier than this.
I’m guessing it’s yet another Klon Klone 
I’ve got two: a Fender Rumble 100 (main amp) and a Carvin PB100-10. The Rumble does have built-in overdrive. The Carvin is just used for quiet, indoor practice.
As mentioned, I have a wee little board already:
The board came with a bundle of about 10 patch cables.
I have A power supply with a bunch of pig-tails, but I don’t think it’s isolated. For the two pedals I have (again, tuner & compression) it works fine.
Honestly, I think I’m leaning towards the Zoom. I’m looking at that wee little board, and thinking I could probably fit another 2 or 3 pedals on it (if I stay with the micro-sized pedals) but then I have to deal with all that other cabling and power supplies and the like. Managing all that might be more trouble than it’s worth, just to eff around a bit.
Gtfo 
That is a good deal!
I absolutely love my GT-1B especially once I got it all hooked up with tone central online. I can adjust so many different parameters within the system. Probably all I will ever need. My one wish and the reason I kept my Zoom unit is the GT-1B does not have a rhythm machine in it.
Sold my Blackstar Fly3 and got this cute mini modelling amp from Positive Grid. The cool thing is that I can use it for guitar and bass. It sounds really good for the size.
(Also can plug it directly in my FRFR speaker if I want to go loud)
Basically all I ever hear from Positive Grid is “buy the Spark Mini” and “Bias 2 on sale now! Save XX%!”
At one point you could order the mini with a second, red, speaker grill.
