My First Pedalboard!

That said - it’s $35 new and sells for about $20 used. It might be worth a shot for an entry level thing. People seem to like it. I’ll try it and report back. Worst case I’m out $15.

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I would second that. Looking for another one for me.

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Hmm, no noise from the Donner so far. Only two pedals in it however. I’ll report back once my BDI-21 gets here :slight_smile:

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I haven’t heard of anyone using a Gate pedal for bass but this is such a great example of what one does, I had to post it.

The Cock Blocker Gate Pedal

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a gate is used with guitars to kill noise when playing with very high gain levels, but I don’t see any situation where a bass player would need a gate ! that said, on my fuzz I set up the bias low enough to make it acts like a gate, and that’s cool :slight_smile:

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The EHX Battalion has a noise gate but I have read mixed reviews.

I’m still gonna get one someday though :slight_smile:

Oh speaking of which my BDI-21 arrived. So good. Great tone and very little noise (with no noise bypassing through the XLR out.) It’s up there with the B1on as one of the best gear values out there. Thanks for the recommendation.

My effect chain is going through some dramatic changes due to some excellent used gear bargains I found. Will post details when done.

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Ok, here we go.

After a few weeks of trolling for used bargains, I decided to go all in on analog pedals over modeled. It happened slowly.

  • First I bought an EHX Bass Clone (because Hooky) and Big Muff Pi (because Big Muff, no explanation needed really), which are both awesome and even better together.
  • Since I had Chorus and Distortion covered, most of what I was using on the Zoom was compression. And I did this for a while, as its compressor models are great.

Then something funny happened. While I was looking for other stuff I noticed the Zooms had dried up in the used market here, and the two B3ns I saw for sale were jacked way up - and getting likes even so.

So next:

  • I sold my B3n for a profit.

This is bittersweet. I liked the thing a lot but was now underutilizing it, and damn, I turned a profit on music gear. I will probably replace it down the line with a Zoom MS-60b or B1four if I miss it enough.

Ok, so now I needed a tuner pedal and a compressor, to replace the stuff I was still using the Zoom for. So after a few days I found some great deals on used ones.

  • Boss TU-2 tuner, pretty much the standard. The buffer will be nice too.
  • Carl Martin Classic Opto Compressor. Just arrived. This thing is a nice, low noise, simple and subtle compressor. I liked it a lot tonight while playing with it.

Here’s where I am at now:

Bass -> Boss Tu-2 -> Opto Comp -> Big Muff -> Bass Clone -> BDI-21 -> U-24

The U-24 is my DAI; it has a USB out to my computer and line out to my headphone amp.

Digging this chain a lot so far. Next I need to get a board and clean this mess up.

El Cheapo Power Supply is holding up just fine too, surprisingly. And the BDI-21 sounds like an amp model when it’s on, nice scooped sound. Great drive on that thing too.

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Howard, one day I’ll come back to this thread and figure out this whole maze of pedal setups you’ve got going on. But for now, just wanted to shout out a thanks, for the input you gave all of us on those Zoom pedals! The B1 Four I got is perfect to play with, pretty beginner friendly, and a good place to start with pedals in general.

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Congrats! And my pleasure.

The Zoom boxes are truly awesome and I think probably the best cash for value I have ever spent on gear (with this BDI-21 looking like a close second :slight_smile:

I am probably going to pick up another one at some point.

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very nice setup @howard ! it will look pretty neat on a board :slight_smile:

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Very nice. Now we need to hear it all!

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Yeah I’m going to need to work out some hosting, I killed my own website a while back and just ragequit SoundCloud because they deleted my cover I posted :slight_smile:

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Temple’s products look amazing but are a bit out of my price range. Plus, the pedals I bought all came pre-velcroed for me :slight_smile:

Looking at the traditional velcro-affixing boards, I am really not seeing any advantage to going with PedalBay or PedalTrain over Donner or Ghostfire. They run half the price (or less) and the advantages of the more expensive ones seem more or less superficial, unless I am really missing something. It’s looking to me like it’s not until you really step up to things like Temple that you start to see serious advantages.

It’s like the sub-$150 tier of metal rack/velcro boards seem by and large all the same with very minor differentiating features; the difference between the $50 Donner/Ghostfire boards and the $150 PedalTrains seems really minimal to me.

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I never really understood why people bought pedalboards : it’s crazy expensive for what it is and it’s pretty easy to do with some wood

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Yeah if you have access to woodworking gear that would definitely seem an option. For me I’d need to have a wood order pre-cut and by the time I was done it would probably approach the cost of the cheaper racks.

I guess the metal ones would be a lot lighter too?

For the seriously different and nice ones (like the Temple ones) I can see why someone would want to get them. They have these nice modular mountings for things like the PSUs and in/out cabling and so on, plus their mounting options seem cool. But you do definitely pay for them and for me I will be happy to velcro the PSU to the bottom of a metal rack :slight_smile:

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not very sure about the weight, steel is heavy :slight_smile:

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For sure, but I think the cheap ones are all aluminum.

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Pretty sure Temple boards are some kind of high-quality aluminum. The difference in weight and bulkiness are the reasons people bother. Having to schlep heavy/bulky shit to gigs gets old very quickly.

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For a long time i avoided effects in general. I wanted to learn to get my tones out of the guitar. Then i got a chorus pedal which i liked. I started learning about the benefits of compression and was shopping for a compression pedal but when i started comparing prices and features it was hard to beat this Boss ME-50B multi effects pedal for the bang for the buck. It’s very compact and not terribly heavy and has everything i was looking for plus a bunch more. A lot of multi effects pedals have digital controls that are hard and confusing to use but this Boss pedal is all knobs, very easy and intuitive to use.

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@techquaikachi I look forward reading what you think about it after you had some time to experiment.

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