I agree that in most cases, I do not need the pedals, but hey, they are available for us, bass players, why not taking advantage of it?
I find having access to sound effects, it really motivated me when I play alone. What I often do, is to “record” one or two low tone repeating bass lines with my looper, and then, I do a higher pitch solo.
What I also like, is that all my gears fit on one board, including the amplifier.
I have the following pedals, in chain order.
Boss TU3 - Classic Tuner/Buffer
Digitech Bass Whammy - Mostly to play Tool…
Darkglass Super Symmetry - Compressor
Southampton Ictineo - Toneshaper
Providence Anadime - Bass Chorus
Neunaber Echelon - Delay
Neunaber Wet Mono - Reverb
TC Electronic Ditto
Radial ProDI - DI Box under the board. The Darkglass Balanced output signal is unfortunately too weak for most PA.
Darkglass Microtube 500 - Bass Amplifier, this amplifier also have an integrated B3K and Vintage distorsion pedals which ends up being at the end of the chain for the moment because I currently do not use the FX loop.
Also, the front pedal is not a loop switcher, but an extended pedal for the bass Amp, Clean, B3K, Vintage, or Mute.
All powered by a 1Spot CS7 1900mA, also located under the board.
This cover most of what I need. Gears can be an endless search for better sound, I used to have a MXR bass octave deluxe and bass envelope filter I have found used for cheap, but other than having fun with it a night or two, they were only taking space on the board.
I am not yet decided with the final chain order. Once I have completed the course, I will spend time on the tone.
Here is my pedal board. It’s a Temple Audio Templeboard Duo 17. The chain order goes as follows:
Boss TU-3 tuner
Seymour Duncan Studio Bass compressor
Ibanez TS9B overdrive
Boss GEB-7 EQ
DigiTech Luxe “anti-chorus”
TC Electronics Spark Mini clean boost
Dunlop Volume (X) Mini volume pedal
Behringer V-Tone BDI-21 bass driver
I also have a Cioks DC5 power supply mounted to the bottom of the board.
Nice! I think at some point I am going to buy a BDI-21, because at that price, why not? Sounds just like a SansAmp and having a spare DI wouldn’t hurt. Kudos to @terb for clueing me in on that one.
How does the Luxe sound? Is it like a chorus but just a second slightly detuned signal? Sounds interesting.
That was my reasoning on the BDI-21 too.
I really like the Luxe. Yes, it is similar to a chorus but without the warble (or whatever you call it). I also like that with the Luxe you can set the detuned signal to be either higher or lower than the clean signal.
Lol. It’s really not that bad. The pedals on the top row are on all the time (except the tuner) so I don’t even think about those. On the bottom row if I’m using the Luxe and/or the overdrive to shape my tone I leave them on for the whole song. The boost is for times when I’m already digging in really hard and need a little extra punch for a bar or two.
I power it all with a power supply mounted to the bottom of the board. The pedals all plug into it and then I just need to plug it into a socket.
Still making knots inside by brain, thinking about what I will or will not do about my hypothetical future pedalboard. I don’t know if I make it as a “modular preamp” for bass, or as a full pedalboard that I could use for guitar and bass. In this second case, it could possibly look like this :
I am getting regular mails from Anderton’s (a big music store in the UK), and today this came in (I realize the blog date is older, but I guess they are having some specials on effects and therefore re-posted this blog):
I know it won’t include much new stuff for buffs such as @howard and @terb, but for us more hardware-challenged chaps, there is some good information in there; in any case, it is broken down into sufficiently small bits that the whole thing with pedals finally starts to make some sense for me
Just in case you folk haven’t already got enough pedal-porn, I stumbled upon this from Andertons (UK retailer). The guy on the left is ex-Level 42 and brother of Mark King.
Weird. I don’t know what the problem is. Regardless, here is the whole short article…
" Believe it or not, some thought should be given as to where the compressor goes in your signal chain. A good rule of thumb is to place any gain-type effects before modulation effects: i.e., compressors and overdrives before delays or flangers. Another one that’s practically set in concrete is to put the compressor before any overdrive, distortion, or fuzz pedal. This is why most guitarists place the compressor first, in order to send a stronger, better signal to the other effects.
There are some guitarists who place the compressor last, though, to boost their signal just before it hits the preamp of their amplifier. The drawback to this approach is that any hum or hiss introduced by other effects will be increased by the compressor’s output gain. Sometimes you can remedy this by placing a noise gate before the compressor, however, the noise reduction can have an effect on the tone quality. A best-of-both-worlds approach might be to put your compressor first and use a signal booster just before your amplifier. Some guitarists also like the sound of putting their wah or envelope filter before the compressor to give it a wider frequency range to affect. Experimentation is always encouraged, but putting the compressor first is recommended."
Thanks! To have it first makes most sense (also from reading what others in here had discussed about compressors), but probably still AFTER the tuner (if you have one on your board) I guess. The tuner has no effect on your tone, but - in turn - works best with the “purest” signal.
I would like to add to the discussion. There are NO hard and fast rules to pedal placement. What pleases me may be an abuse to others. I have been known to link pedals that don’t like to be linked simply because… The ultimate goal should always be to please yourself.
Yeah. Like the advice for modulation to go after the gain stage. Well sure, phasers and flangers are super noisy and you don’t want to amplify that noise, but then again if your gain effects are adding dirt or distortion, do you really want to chorus or flange the distortion? Maybe, maybe not.
Edit (way later): After much experimentation I found that yes, this is actually awesome, and now I always modulate after dirt
