Bass Effects vs Normal Guitar Effects

[CSG]

I'm aiming this more at Wah and Distortion. It's a little hard to find bass pedals at local guitar shops (the only big place is a good 45 min drive from me) but there is always an abundance of guitar effect. So why are there different versions of pedals?

[bongomania]

In some cases it's just marketing, but in other cases (like a lot of distortions and OD's) the regular guitar version does roll off some low end. You'll want to check the FAQ for some more info.

[Rockingbird]

Guitar effects have a nasty habit of cutting your low end and screwing your tone over. I don't think bass effects do that to guitar's though, so why hey make both versions instead of just bass is beyond me.

[CSG]

Yeah I was mostly looking at the Electro-Harmoix Big Muff, and they had a guitar one at the local store.

[darkstorm]

Bass overdrives and distortions also ussually arent as much as the guitar version as far as level of OD/Dist. Plus some let you blend OD with straight voice. In some cases a good bass eq after the OD/Dist can fix the low end drainage. Also more headroom in most bass effects. If nothing else this results in less muddying of lower bass when useing high output bass. Guitar effects designed to work well with 7 string ans barritone and downtuned guitars work better with bass in my experience, then do the ones not designed with that in mind.

A main reason I dont go seperate pedals rout rather then multieffects is the latter just works much much better for me to feed signal direct to mixer or recorder. Prob in part cause the multieffects units can also drive headphones unlike seperate pedals.

[Darkglass]

Mhh, is a good question.
The low end rolloff is intended so that the overdrive doesn't sound fuzzy.
The fuzzy "distortions" (like Big Muff, and other) are result of saturating more the low end. And I say "distortions" rather carefully since for me they are all fuzzes. IMO a distortion has the same approach as an overdrive, but with more gain.

Designing a overdrive for bass that doesn't get fuzzy, and reatains the low end is something extremely tricky! That's why there are so few decent sounding overdrives in the market (IMO).
The Pre clipping filtering can be extremely tricky and complex (and therefore expensive to develop and manufacture) and the post clipping filtering is not piece of cake either.

Actually the midscoop (that most of us find annoying) in most bass Overdrives is intended to increase the lo end presence (by scooping frequencies over 1kHz, the ear tends to percieve the hi end less than the low end).

So, designing a bass overdrive, that doesn't sound farty, keeps your lo end intact, and doesn't color your bass' natural tone by killing all the mids, is hard, very hard.
Designign a guitar overdrive instead is so much easier, since you don't have to worry about keeping any lo end, or scooping mids for boost the lower frequencies presence... That my friend is why you will probably can probably find 40 times more guitar than bass overdrives.

Regards

Doug.

[Staccato]

What about guitar compression/sustainer pedals used instead for bass? The compression 'guitar pedals' seem popular w/ TB'rs.