Bass Tone: What is your take on it?

[Boy_Narf]

Hello Everyone,

So I have always played bass either at home for fun, or once in a while to help out a friend but I recently joined a band as a full time bass player. After getting a proper gigging amp I started researching pedals.

AmpTweaker Bass Tight Fuzz: Bought this pedal last year, and it sounds massive! I absolutely loved this pedal until trying it out in a band setting. It just doesn't cut! Removed from my board.

Darkglass B3K: Decided I want a nice OD tone, so I head on over to the TB forums and read a 1 million page thread on the B3K. Ordered! Plugged this into my amp for literally 30 seconds and knew it wasn't for me. Talk about an overhyped pedal! Once of the worse I have ever played. Sold a few days later.

Xotic Bass BB Preamp: Have had this pedal for a few years now. Actually bought a second one after liquidating all of my pedals about 5 years back. Have used this numerous times direct into an interface for a convincing amp tone. This pedal destroys the B3K. Not even a fair fight! So I put the BB back on my board.

Xotic Bass RC Booster: So I'm going to use the BB as my overdrive sound and I'll get a decent clean boost pedal and kick it in for the few times I need to punch out in the mix. So I add this to the board before the BB. It sounds great, and can be set almost 100% transparent, but I didn't find myself using it all that much.

*At this point I'm getting annoyed. I really want a "huge" gain sound but nothing is really working out. 90% of the time I end up staying with my clean amp tone. It sounds great!

Xotic X-Blender: So being the stubborn consumer that I am, I continue searching for answers over on TB. I discover the X-Blender and it sounds brilliant! Blending my pedals into my clean tone? So I will be able to punch through while the effect is engaged? COUNT ME IN! In all honesty I got this to run with my WMD Geiger Counter. The GC sounds brilliant but I don't have the bass version, and it's hard to get a nice mid punchy tone. The blender showed up this afternoon, and I played around with it and the GC for about 30 mins. Wasn't blown away. The GC kinda loses it's magic when it's blended. So I hooked up the TightFuzz to see how it would fare. Not much better. One last try with the BB, and it sounds great! So I wired up my GLXD, Blender, BB, and Ditto and headed off to practice. I really liked the BB at half gain, and the blender set to around 9 o'clock. Added warmth, compression, and just a hint of hair. It actually helped my punch through the mix at lower volumes! YAY! Part way through practice I got to thinking... "why the heck do I need all these damn pedals? I'm the bass player!" I proceeded to run clean into my amp for the rest of the night. I upped the volume a few notches and it sounded great. the Traynor SB500 is extremely dynamic for a SS head. I started to wish that I had stuck with my Pedal Train Mini, and my two pedals. Now I have a PT Junior, and a mountain of effects laying around me hah.

My guitar player has two huge pedal boards, and the keyboard player is always switching to crazy patches and effects. They even made faces at me after hearing some of the pedals I brought in. I guess they feel the same.

I have this vision in my head of a massive fuzzy/overdriven bass tone for certain parts of our songs. I am finding however, that most od/fuzz pedals either don't cut, or are so overblown on certain frequencies that I can't dial them close to my clean tone. We filmed our first show and I was pretty happy with my recorded tone. That is until I kicked on my Fuzz, or OD pedals. Like I was hitting a mute button or something. One of my friends even asked me what I was doing with my pedals up on stage. He couldn't hear a single difference. haha, money well spent.

So what do you guys think? Is there really any place for effects on bass? or best to leave the effects to the guitar man? I'm pretty close to just sticking my wireless receiver to the top of my amp, dialing in a hint more dirt from the amp and calling it a day.

:S

[MikeD]

How about putting a wah in there, that way you can adapt your frequencies to the tonal differences and find your place in the mix. Having a pedal freak guitarist and a keyboard doesn't leave you with much wiggle room except pure bottom...and boosting bass never makes it clearer, just louder and will have everyone else running for their volume knobs.

[a.hun]

There is definitely room for effects on bass. They maybe aren't needed, or not all the time, but yeah I often use them. Mostly EQ and compression for finer tone and dynamics control, but sure, effects for drive and other things can have their place.

Re getting massive drive sounds you'll see that the current trend for bass overdrive / distortion effects is to be able to blend clean and dirty signals. And that works because you can effectively control the loss of bottom end you usually get by blending in just as much of the clean signal as you want. I recently grabbed an MXR Bass Overdrive - with clean blend control - and that makes it very usable to me. It maybe doesn't sound outstanding on its own, (not compared to some other options I have, eg my Orange Overdrive), but it works very well indeed for me in a band mix which is exactly what I was after.

Even Orange seem to have caught on to the 'blend trend' with the OB1!

Tips: You may well find that 'huge' gain sounds don't need that much gain at all. That is true for guitar IMO, but probably even more for bass.
It is also handy for bass if you can dial most of the drive in the midrange, not much lower down or too high up either. If you can't blend than this is exactly where bi-amping comes in - and usually immediately makes everything way too complicated as well.

BTW, yeah it mostly takes longer than 30 seconds to get the best out of different bits of gear, but I know where you are coming from - sometimes something just isn't going to suit...


Andy.

[Les Paul Lover]

Have you tried the zvex woolly mammoth?

I built it as a clone for my niece and really liked it on guitar.
I'm still to herbier thoughts on that actually.

The thing is with fuzz and low end, you'll need a good boost in volume to still be heard fuzzy in the mix. At equal volume, you just sound less defined and don't quite cut through so well.

[misterfolkertsma]

Bi-amp...

Edit: i kinda know what boat you're in. I just started picking up bass and at home I'm playing through my R30 with a Malekko fuzz and I like the sound of it. It sounds good to me blended with a proper bass-amp. Thick, textured, grainy. I'm very much into the sound of True Widow's bassplayer.

[Boy_Narf]

Thanks guys!

I actually got the wah idea last night after listening to the live Rage Against The Machine Album. I believe it's the song "Calm Like A Bomb". Tim hits his dual wahs wow! very big sound. Thought it would be some fancy filter pedal or something, but it was a basic bass wah. Going to look into these a bit more.

The Xotic X-Blend has made any pedal bendable. I will say running the BB with the Blender sounds great, but I'm not sure it's worth all the extra pedals just for a tiny bit of cut. Like I said before, upping the volume slightly and running clean essentially did the same thing.

Yes I have been eyeing the OB1 since it's announcement, and they just started popping up online in Canada. I'm concerned however, that the dirt tone might not cut through. Since it is a shared EQ, I can see myself having to boost the mids (for dirtier tones) so that it translates over to the dirty side as well. Now sure how the gain EQ is setup, but I am really excited to try one of these out.

Never set any of my pedals to high gain with the exception of the TightFuzz. The pedal only kicks in when the gain knob is maxed. Even dropping it one notch just kills the pedal. I did a test last night. Blending in 25% of the BB preamp, compared to it full out. The tone sounded much thicker, and cut better with the 25% blend.

Ok I might have exaggerated a bit. I had wanted the B3K for over a year, and finally decided to order it. The package came in and I rushed to plug it in. The smile on my face was gone in about 30 seconds hah. I was a bit angry so put the pedal aside. Came back the next day and played it for about an hour. Just couldn't get a good sound out of it. There were settings that sounded alright, but for those the pedal was barely even noticeable. I posted a huge thread over on TB and to my surprise lots of people agree with me. It's nothing special, and nowhere near the "best overdrive ever made" hah. Fell for the hype, oh well.

Have not tried the Wolly Mammoth. I did have a Fuzz Factory back in the day but it was unusable with my wireless. The pedal had to be the first in the chain which is impossible for me, so I have avoided the ZVEX gain pedals ever since.

The volume boost is a bit of an issue. Played a gig a few months back where the sound guy gave me a nod, he was happy with my levels. Then I said "one second", kicked on my TightFuzz and his eyes got huge. "THAT IS WAY TOO LOUD!". So I lowered the volume to what his board was happy with and couldn't hear myself at all haha.

Bi amping is not really an option for me. Had I considered it a few months back I would have picked up a cab with stereo inputs, and run two heads into them. Loading all of my gear into my Hyundai Accent is already a bit of laugh. The back seats are folded down and floor to ceiling is filled with gear. One cab, one bass, amp head case, pedal board case, and briefcase full of cables. Our keyboard player had to catch a ride with me after the show and it was interesting to say the least hah. He had his midi keyboard, keytar, and laptop rig with him. Was not a comfy ride for any of us

I'm goona mess around with the xblender and my other pedals a bit today, but I'm honestly considering going back to a mini board with a power supply, wireless, and ditto looper on it. Perhaps I should spend more time practicing than messing with pedals

[MikeD]

Thanks guys!

I actually got the wah idea last night after listening to the live Rage Against The Machine Album. I believe it's the song "Calm Like A Bomb". Tim hits his dual wahs wow! very big sound. Thought it would be some fancy filter pedal or something, but it was a basic bass wah. Going to look into these a bit more.

...and best of all, it's "storm trooper white"

[Mystic38]

I agree with Andy..

See, its a challenge for guitarist to play bass... and pedals (the lack of 'em) is at the top of the list.

If you can get great tone from your amp, then a compressor and an eq/boost would be 95%+ of what you would need.. some drive?.. but 90% of bass players i see use no pedals, a few use 1 or 2 and the occasional one has several

hate to save you money..but...

[Jondog]

It's deep

[Boy_Narf]

I actually picked up a USA made RAT2 the other day for about 50% off. I'm running it through the x-blender with a bit of my dry tone blended in. It sounds wicked! Just hoping it holds up in a band setting :S

Will report back!

[Bensen]

Have you tried the zvex woolly mammoth?
...

+1 I use it with my bass and love the sound. But it's not like a guitar pedal where you hear all the distortion in the band mix, it makes the bass sound deeper and bigger and synthier.

Also like autowah and octaver for bass.

[thebigcheese]

The bassist in my band uses a PT Pro pedal board (as do I). Between the two of us, we take up most of the front of the stage with pedals. So yes, there is room for pedals on bass. He uses delay, reverb, modulation, and fuzz. Lots of fuzzes.

The one he uses most is a Russian Big Muff, a green one. He bought several trying to find just the right one and this is it. Doesn't lose any of the low end (almost seems like some of the clean bleeds through, really) but adds some really good fuzz. He also loves the Malekko B:Assmaster, which is another great bass fuzz, but it depends on the sound we're going for. The Muff tends to get the most use. He also has a really expensive pedal by DAM pedals that does subtle distortion, but it isn't on his main board right now, probably because he doesn't have much use for it in our band and it was really expensive...

I play bass in another band and have been loving the Malekko Plus Ultra, but it has to have the filter switched in or you lose all the low end. A lot of people use the Tech 21 Sansamp Bass Driver, but I haven't found it to do quite the subtle drive I want it to do, so that has come off the board. For the most part, just having low, buzzy action and a good amp and bass will get a pretty good growly tone that almost sounds a little driven.

The Way Huge Swollen Pickle is also supposed to work very well on bass. And I will probably pick up a Source Audio Bass Multiwave Distortion at some point, it gets everything from super wacky sounds to more standard drive sounds. They are also coming out with a simpler bass distortion soon that might be worth checking out.

Having said all that, I still haven't really found a more subtle drive that I like. Finding over the top fuzzes and drives is easy, it's the smooth, subtle ones that don't ruin my existing tone I struggle with.

[snickerpuss]

Have you tried a bass big muff? Modeled on the russian muffs, those things sound massive without dropping off that critical low end. If you want a huge tone on bass, run a bass big muff into an old boss flanger, then accept your guitarists' resignation.

[Boy_Narf]

I actually just got a Bass Big Muff as part of a two pedal deal. Was hoping this would be the one for me. On the bass boost setting it's way too bassy. On the normal setting, there is absolutely no low end. On the clean blend setting it's almost like the fuzz is too low compared to the clean tone. Going to test it a bit more before selling it but I was really disappointed in the BBM. It gets tons of great reviews, and praise from all over the net, but it's the worst fuzz I've tried so far.

As part of the two pedal deal I also got a made in USA Rat. I played this pedal for almost an hour when I got it. It sounds so nasty (in a good way ) through my X-Blender. I'm just hoping it cuts in a band mix. I just ordered a One Control Mesquite clean blend pedal. I really don't like the color that the X-Blender adds, nor do I appreciate how big it is hah, but I love the concept. Trying to get everything to fit on my PT-Nano has not been easy hah. The Looper should be here in a few days, and I'll report back after my next jam.

[thebigcheese]

The modern Bass Muff is not really the same as those old Russian Muffs. Kind of a shame.