Best pedals and effects for the solo player
 

I'm looking for recommendations on what kind of pedals to use for a person who is mainly playing alone or with one other player (most likely piano or vocals). Right now I know I'm interested in a looper pedal (for creating bass lines to solo over), chorus (for fattening the sound), and octave up pedals (to mimic the guitar/bass duality). Any recommendations for these types of pedals? Are there any other types of pedal that I would find useful that I'm leaving out?

The Fishman Fission Bass pedal http://www.zzounds.com/item--FSMFISSIONBASS

Check out Blood Party. One bass player, no guitar, lots of effects.

I would go with the Boomerang Looper. It's a little known company but make a great product. Better than both the Boss and Digitech.

I prefer the EBS Unichorus. Their stuff ain't cheap but it's incredible.

That Fishman Fission is hard to beat for your application. I use an MXR Ocatave but I don't need the octave up.

The EBS Bass IQ is an Envelope filter. I like it because you can set it to "up" or "down" only operation. I love the up. The IQ's auto wah is great also but I use the MXR Bass Env. for this function because it's got more control. I'd love for the EBS to add the control of the MXR.

The EHX Freeze or SuperEgo can give you nice drones to play over. I also use the EXH Hog for situations like you're describing - it has a bunch of different octave, 3rds and 5ths that you can choose from.

If you play solos, a delay can really make things sound much bigger. Also, a fuzz that goes into a good envelope filter with adjustable attack and decays can really make things sound lots bigger then they really are.

Even though I bought a bunch of effects with the same sort of thing in mind as your describing, I don't use a whole lot of effects for the majority of the time. Even when it's just and only me playing, or I'm jamming out with a Funk band or with an artsy band, I still only use effects maybe 10-20% of the time. It's kinda sad that I've spent this much on effects and use them so infrequently....

I can understand that! I think that I'm going to make the looper first priority. The others just enhance or affect my sound, whereas the looper will actually let me layer my performance and practice both creating a rhythm and playing a solo line.