Double Bass Asking for Advice... It's been awhile.

[DrayMiles]

Hi Everyone,

I know people are busy and recovering from the holidays, but I'm new to the effects game. I am compounding this issue even more because these effects will be used on upright bass only. I am TOTALLY clueless, but hopefully this community can help me get started in the right direction. I'm not sure of the best way to get the maximum output or combination of clean and altered sounds. Subtlety is appreciated in the soundscape, but I do have a Digitech Whammy pedal coming tomorrow. That will be it as far as I'm concerned. I think I'll need a Strymon or some power block, but will I need a power head for the Grace Felix? Anyway, I'll be using the bow and pizzicato on this journey, I'm using an underwood pickup with a realist lifeline. The bass is an 1880 Gamba. I'll continue studying un-amplified obviously . So, please view the setup and thanks in advance for taking the time to chime in...

Cheers,

D.

 

[BobDeRosa]

Please share with us what kind of music you're playing that you believe requires effects, and what other effects besides the whammy you're considering. Is this for solo work or with a group?

 

[DrayMiles]

Hi Bob,

This is only for me. I’m not in any bands currently…

 

[DrayMiles]

I’ve had an interesting career so I need help with this one… it’s been a lot of live and session work.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

If you want to keep a bit of the Db character, feedback delay lines with modulation, chorus and reverb work well. If you play alone at home a good looper might be a good investment too.
A little bit of overdrive (tube-like) might work too, but a heavier distortion/fuzz is way too much as the instrument character gets completely lost. Only useable as a short time effect and might work best with the bow.

 

[Wasnex]

I don't really understand the question. When you are using effects you balance them to taste. It's entirely subjective, so this means you might like more or less than I like. Learn what each knob does and then fiddle with it till you think it sounds good. Think of it like painting textures.

Here is an important idea: Pay attention to levels when you switch from patch to path. Normally I like to keep the gain consistent from patch to patch, but there are valid reasons why you might have a patch the bumps up the volume or drops the volume down. When this is appropriate, it's tied to the needs of the music.

Effects balance and levels are not a set it and forget it. You generally have to make adjustments when you change locations, and even if you have turn up or down significantly.


The Grace Felix is a preamp. You can either plug it into an amp, mixer, or audio interface, or you can plug a set of headphones or IEM buds into the Felix.

 

[DrayMiles]

If you want to keep a bit of the Db character, feedback delay lines with modulation, chorus and reverb work well. If you play alone at home a good looper might be a good investment too.
A little bit of overdrive (tube-like) might work too, but a heavier distortion/fuzz is way too much as the instrument character gets completely lost. Only useable as a short time effect and might work best with the bow.

Thank you.

 

[DrayMiles]

I do want to be able to do whammy effects but I’m feeling drawn to the brain waves pitch shifter with the Whammy pedal.

 

[Jason Hollar]

Those Jam pedals look great and sound cool online. Never bumped into one in the wild. Would love to hear what you think of those!

 

[james condino]

'Don't need no stinkin mamby pamby hipster millennial topknot $600 artisan groomed beard effects pedal crap or amplification; whole lotta' nuthin'. Go out there with an old bass strung with camel tendon strings and scrape an old pine tree for rosin or get some chewing gum from underneath the table or a possum turd and play till your skinny fingerz bleed like we did back in my day and and and and......and stop yer' whinin'.....and you dadgum kidz get off my lawn!!!!!!

Ok...if you are going to use effects, get a decent secondhand pedalboard to mount them all up to and get a good isolated power brick. My favorite pedal is the POG (Thx Jeremy!)- mainly used as an organ pedal for things like "Watermellon Man", but also I'll hit it in the middle of a note so it blooms the back end. If you are going to use a crybaby / wah, make sure it has a volume feature so it is dual purpose; I use the volume feature a lot more than the Wah. Add a nice pedal based tuner, and one pedal that gets used all of the time is an Earthquaker Spatial Delivery slightly gained out for those Floydian / spacey long bowed tones. I have a delay and looper and several others, they mainly stay on my guitar board. AN unplanned looper going off live is absolute chaos! A simple tube screamer with the gain backed off makes a very nice boost pedal. The Sparkle Drive with the clean / blend is one of the very few that will also work with a peizo pickup.

In general, I get a better pedalboard sound from my magnetic pickup. Put your preamp in the front end of all that junk so you get a good boosted signal. Remember that after you run your bass into a pickup and then through 27 miles of copper wire and electronics, it won't sound "like my bass only louder", but in the right context, you can add a tremendous amount to the sonic sensation. You will also absolutely fall back in love with the simple days when it is just you, the acoustic bass, and a nice bow and no need to carry around all of that junk.

See that big setup for my loud live gigs? It only takes me about 16 minutes to set everything up and be ready to roll while I still sit around waiting 1 hour 35 minutes for the soundperson to dial in just an acoustic guitar and a single vocal mic next to me...!

 

[Vunz]

I take a bit of a different approach when it comes to playing alone with effects: apart from a bit of reverb all effects affect the looped signal instead of my direct signal. In this way I am able to create interesting soundscapes over which I can improvise.

Here is a pic of my pedalboard:

 

[DrayMiles]

Those Jam pedals look great and sound cool online. Never bumped into one in the wild. Would love to hear what you think of those!

Well, they gave me an endorsement, and I love the purity of sound, but there’s a lot of stuff I can’t use because I can’t think of how I would make practical use of it. The company is top notch regarding quality and service though. I love the artwork too.

 

[DrayMiles]

Thanks everyone for the advice. I’ve been thinking about doing this for years, but I love the acoustic sound of bass so much I thought I would end up in eternal purgatory or something similar. I’m primarily a studio guy, but I want to play live more. I just find it daunting knowing where to hook up everything.

 

[Martin Beer]

I'd be tempted to run separate dry and wet paths with a volume pedal for the effected sound, and combine them after the effects. You could either use a splitter (or the two outputs on a Boss tuner) or just two pickups and run one through the effects. Then you can keep your normal amplified sound and swell in the extra stuff as needed.
I'm not using anything like that on double bass at present, but I've experimented in the past for improv gigs. I also found that a magnetic pickup played nicest with pedals, but the bow response from them is screwy.

 

[DrayMiles]

But I’ve got 2 separate pickups. I plan on using the underwood for all effects and run the realist clean.

 

[DrayMiles]

 

[DrayMiles]

Now I’m finished methinks…

 

[SVT4001]

Hey Dray!
Please consider keeping a thread running with your experiences here. Posting about what works, what doesn't, and what you expected to happen (generally) vs what actually happens when you engage effects like this could potentially help a lot of folks.
My experiences with this sort of thing are very limited and were conducted many years ago. I had very limited success with acoustic uprights (carved, hybrid, and plys) with various strings (lots of different steel strings, gut, and synthetics), using just about every pickup and or mic that was available at the time. I gave up and moved to solid body electric uprights (Clevinger and another one...embarrassed to say I can't remember what it was at present). I never got the hang of playing arco on EUBs, I need the body points to anchor the bass, EUBs kept wanting to roll on me. Certainly, user error that could have been overcome with more persistence.
As for effects, I tried early looper and delay pedals mostly, and some over the top dirt pedals, like a Sanford and Sonny Bluebeard.
Anyway, I hope "Now I'm finished" doesn't mean you are giving up on this. I think there are a lot more tools available now than when I was trying this stuff, and I didn't know Talkbass existed, so you got that! =)
Best wishes!!!
Joe

 

[DrayMiles]

Hey Dray!
Please consider keeping a thread running with your experiences here. Posting about what works, what doesn't, and what you expected to happen (generally) vs what actually happens when you engage effects like this could potentially help a lot of folks.
My experiences with this sort of thing are very limited and were conducted many years ago. I had very limited success with acoustic uprights (carved, hybrid, and plys) with various strings (lots of different steel strings, gut, and synthetics), using just about every pickup and or mic that was available at the time. I gave up and moved to solid body electric uprights (Clevinger and another one...embarrassed to say I can't remember what it was at present). I never got the hang of playing arco on EUBs, I need the body points to anchor the bass, EUBs kept wanting to roll on me. Certainly, user error that could have been overcome with more persistence.
As for effects, I tried early looper and delay pedals mostly, and some over the top dirt pedals, like a Sanford and Sonny Bluebeard.
Anyway, I hope "Now I'm finished" doesn't mean you are giving up on this. I think there are a lot more tools available now than when I was trying this stuff, and I didn't know Talkbass existed, so you got that! =)
Best wishes!!!
Joe

Hey Joe!

I’ll keep you posted. I can say so far the bass whammy is incredible, the distortion pedal tracks great with a bow, the brainwaves harmonizer tracks well, but I’m not sold on compression for DB. It takes away too much regarding touch dynamics to me. I h plan on trying the distortion in front of the whammy. People say it simulates a Floyd rose dive bomb effect. Well, we’re off!

 

[DrayMiles]

I'd be tempted to run separate dry and wet paths with a volume pedal for the effected sound, and combine them after the effects. You could either use a splitter (or the two outputs on a Boss tuner) or just two pickups and run one through the effects. Then you can keep your normal amplified sound and swell in the extra stuff as needed.
I'm not using anything like that on double bass at present, but I've experimented in the past for improv gigs. I also found that a magnetic pickup played nicest with pedals, but the bow response from them is screwy.

The volume pedal is a great idea. Thanks!