Setting up my first pedal board
 

So i've been playing bass without a pedalboard for about 7 years and never felt hard done by. But recently I've made up my mind to build one as having a tunerpedal would be useful and I'd like to be able to tweak things without having to go and twiddle knobs on my amp.

I'm buying a tuner pedal, an overdrive, a compressor and a second overdrive (one for full distortion one for slight crunchy sound)

So at the moment I have an Ampeg SVT7 head and I'm loving it.

At the back of my amp it has a "tuner out" and "FX send and return"

So if I've got all my pedals out front on a pedalboard do I need to plug them into different places? Like the two distortion pedals going straight into the amp the compressor going into the FX and the tuner going into the tuning slot?


So am I getting this wrong or is this going to require a lot of trailing leads?

and also if anyone wants some brownie points does anyone want to explain to me the attraction of chorus pedals? #

Thanks in advance guys

I think you can just go from the "effects out" port to the first pedal and then into the "effects in" port from the last pedal in the chain.

Chorus is nice for adding a touch of shimmer to your bass sound. It's nice if used sparingly. Definitely not for every song.

I would not use the return on the amp. Go bass>tuner>comp>OD>Dist>amp. Then is you get any more pedals you can slip them between each other depending on how much they affect tone. General rule is that the more the effect shapes the tone, the further along it should be in the signal chain.

I don't really subscribe to that myself. If you want to put in EQ in front of the distortion to drive specific portion of the distortion, you can do that. If you want to put the EQ after the distortion to shape the distorted sound, you can do that too. This applies to almost all effect combinations, IME.

I agree with this: put all your pedals on the floor, run your bass into the first one, the main input of your amp out of the last one, and change the stuff in between as you see fit.

Thanks :) that sounds great

At the moment I'm using a wireless system, do you recommend that I mount the wireless system at the back of the pedalboard? I'm used to having it on top of my amp but having it on the board doesn't sound so bad.

Another order to try:

bass>OD>Dist>comp>tuner>amp

You may also find that with two levels of OD/Distortion that the comp is really not needed.


-JV

So, why can't one just use the effects loop? Isn't that what it's for?

Generally speaking it's for rack effects, which output and are looking for a hotter signal than pedals are designed for.

You can use it for pedals, but it adds a bunch of cable, usually doesn't sound as good, and generally is a pain in the butt, IME.


Putting the wireless on the pedal board is a perfect place; Putting it by your amp will just have you tied down by a cable to your pedalboard, and in that case why would you even have the wireless?

+1 most loops on amps are line level, where most stomp boxes are instrument level. Hence, in front of the amp is normally the best option. But, it won't "hurt" anything to use the loop either. Probably won't sound as good, except maybe for modulation type fx.