Being new here I read through alot of this. Gadgets and more gadgets. Some of us love them and some of us? Not so much. I’m in the latter camp.
After building the 2nd parts-bass that my daughter painted I found I was struggling to get as good a sound from that bass as I had with the first one. Bought a number of pedals, Sansamp, TC electronic boost, chorus, etc.
In the end I stopped and just gave it some thought. If you’re at all familiar with the Squier Musicmaster reissue from around '96 you may have heard about the Vista Tone pickups those had. That is a fantastic sound in a setup I like, wireless to tune pedal to amp. And it’s passive which I also like.
So I researched that pickup, got the info on the magnets, the design, and the resistance. Then I reached out to Sentell pickups. For no extra fee they made pickups for me to match the specs that would fit in both basses. Before I installed them I shielded both basses as a precaution too.
When I installed those, the sun rose behind me, and a chorus of angels sang a resounding “hallelujah.” Well, maybe that didn’t happen but I was able to get the punchier sound I was looking for with no effects. I’m a simple guy after all.
All that being said, I did recently add one effect pedal. It’s a TC Electronic Sub N Up mini octaver. Keeping with my desire to be simple, that’s how it works. And the added sound can be crazy or minimal depending on what you want. One thing I find EXTREMELY helpful with this pedal is when I practice I engage it to a level that great exceeds what I would use at a gig. Why? Because if you are not fretting cleanly it stands out alot with this pedal. That may be the case with other effects too but I just noticed it now because I like this pedal enough to have kept it.
sure, you had a sound you wanted and you got it. nothing wrong with that but it depends on what you want. many of us like a sound that you absolutely are going to need effects for, you’re not going to recreate a shoegaze sound with just your technique and a change of pickups . and a lot of us just like to eff around with pedals, it’s fun. well for me it is anyways
You’re right on all that. I’m sure lots of people get what they want with pedals. I guess my post was more about why I was “anti-pedals” and now have one.
For me, pedals are like playing with Legos. I don’t need any of them. It’s about wanting the experiences of building a board and hearing all different sounds they’re capable of and trying to create different sounds in my head.
@anon83302053 You’re in a very different place than me. You actually work with a band and play out.
I would like to think, if I had something like that, I would spend more time working on what’s best for the band. Rather than playing pedal time in my room.
If somebody said, “Eric, we need you to play bass!” I wouldn’t even consider bringing my pedal board.
At most, I would get a VT Bass DI and use that with my Rumble so I would have an Ampeg like option if the Rumble wasn’t doing it.
Orherwise, the rest would stay home where I can be as weird and impractical as I want without slowing down progress for the group.
Chorus, flangers and phasers generally work in similar ways - they take the input signal, modulate it, and mix it back with the original to create an effect. Phasers vary the phase, flangers work in the time domain with delay, and Chorus slightly varies the period of the wave (i.e. pitch) and delay. All of them have several parameters you can tweak for how much it modulates the signal. Different pedals present these controls in different ways.
Typical controls for a chorus would be “width” or “delay” (controlling delay time), “depth” (controlling pitch difference), “rate” (for controlling the oscillator that gives the “sweeping” effect that determines how much of the effect is applied). Some also let you control how many signal copies are modulated and mixed back in; these are awesome. Usually the control will be “taps” to mimic phaser filter taps, or “voices”.
Chorus with a high rate is pretty much the same effect as Vibrato. That’s actually a blend on the Julia; Dry/Chorus/Vibrato. I absolutely hate that and would much much rather have separate mix and rate knobs.
@barney did you tried the all new cab engine 3.5 update from Helix? I hear lots of good stuff about it (4 new bass cabs). They also added a lot of new effects like the Earthquaker Plumes and the Boctaver which is based on the Boss OC-2. Just those two alone are worth buying the stomp/native lol. Ugh I kinda regret letting go of my HX Stomp.
Pretty sure Line6 listens to the feedback from the community. The amount of free features they push in these patches are amazing! I haven’t seen much other companies doing this without asking extra money for it.
So far for me it’s the VMTU followed by the Microtubes X Ultra, but I was also surprised how much I liked the Bass Butler. Then again, I love Orange in general, so maybe I shouldn’t have been.
. and a lot of us just like to eff around with pedals, it’s fun. well for me it is anyways 
