I used to play guitar so I have a Outlaw deputy Marshall distortion pedal, but I since I don’t play guitar anymore I don’t have a use for it. Is it possible to use on bass?
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Absolutely. The worst thing that’ll happen when you use a guitar pedal on bass is that you might end up losing some of the low end of the frequency spectrum. For some genres, this is almost a blessing (punk, post punk type stuff). You won’t hurt either your bass or the pedal though.
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Do you have any pedals you would reccomend that won’t break the bank?
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Hi! I’m another guitarist turned bassist. I still have a few pedals laying around, but I ended up getting a Zoom B1X Four. It’s a relatively inexpensive multi effects processor that I got for experimenting. I figure if I find effects I like and would use, I’d get a standalone pedal for that. My “pedalboard” right now is a Boss tuner into the Zoom. I know the Zoom has a tuner, but again I already had the pedal and was used to it.
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I was just about to suggest a multi effect pedal. It might cost a bit more upfront, it will also give you access to a whole library of effects to play around with, costing you less overall.
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Lemmy from Motörhead used a Marshall guitar amp for his overdriven tone mixed with the gnarly bass cabs. The guys at tech 21 started making bass pedals after learning about all the bassists using their preamps for bass. They started out as guitar amp guys. Geddy Lee of rush started using them and it made them famous. So absolutely you can use guitar pedals for bass. Some of them sound better than the bass pedals out there. I’ve used multifx pedals and blended in a line 6 guitar amp just for the overdrives and effects. The trick is anything with low and hi pass filters or a blend control will work great. That’s the secret of getting grit but keeping bass tones together.
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I’d recommend demon fx pedals. They are poor man’s dark glass but they sound great. I have the micro tubes x and a7k pedals. They have eq controls and both sound huge together. And combined is about 1/3 rd of the cost of a dark glass pedal used. If you are ok spending money then tech 21 sans amps are super nice too.
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I’ve been using a JCM800 tube preamp for a weeks now paired with the SVT4 on my Helix. It’s a really rad / gnarly tone. I’ve got another DI box with a JCM sim built in too. It’s a really cool tone if you like a really mid heavy and gritty sound.
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there’s a ginormous thread here on it, almost all of us have had one at some point it seems. definitely recommended. but there’s a buncha multi-fx pedals now that are just as cheap and a lot more advanced, the valeton GP-5 is great if they are actually in stock now, they were hard to get when they first came out.
https://www.amazon.com/Valeton-GP-5-Compact-Multi-Effects-Processor/dp/B0FFY8Q386
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