Brand Preference?

[Pep]

MXR for Octave and Envelope Filter, Line 6 for wireless, Roland "BOSS" TU-2 Tuner, Whirlwind IMP 2 Direct Box. I'm going to upgrade the direct box to the Rupert Neve RNDI. It's a bit pricey but worth it IMHO.

 

[groooooove]

there is definitely something nice about a reputable company. boss pedals don't always sound the best, but the ones i like, i would always buy again because they're reliable, they sound fine, and they're affordable.

i own almost no pedals at the moment, but in my day it was pretty mixed.

 

[brianrost]

I'm not picky about effects, I don't own a lot and I don't use them often so...Boss, EH, DOD have always been my first port of call.

My first effect, $8 brand new at a Lafayette Radio store in 1973:

My newest, $60 used:

 

[Grahams Groove]

Yeah, I was pondering the Collider, but ultimately, I think I'd rather delay and reverb each have their own pedal. The pair has a bit more versatility than the Collider as well. Don't get me wrong, the Collider seems like a great pedal and would definitely save some money in the long run. But I think by the end of next year be buying the Ventris as the last pedal for my setup. Probably going to add the EQ2 and Nemesis towards the end of this year after I've paid some previous purchases off. Probably buy the hothand next time I have $100 to spare.

I totally didn't mean to become a Source Audio fanboy. Their pedals just cover so much ground.

Damnit. I forgot the EQ2 dropped, and I may need to pick one of these up.

 

[JRA]

do you find yourself gravitating to certain brands over others in your pedal selection?

i do not practice "brand loyalty." there is no reliable benefit.*

* the exception is toilet paper and beer. i have standards, and therefore: preferences.

 

[BassBrass]

right now my board is Boss(optional)-MXR-Wounded Paw-(Black Arts-Malekko)-SmallSoundBigSound-90's Ibanez-Tech21-TC El.-Malekko-TC El.-Digitech-Electro Harmonix-(Wayhuge-EH-EQuakerDevises-MXR)-Hotone-Boss-Digitech--amp. The ( ) are looped off sections only active when loop or send-return is on. 4 companies have 2 reps.

 

[Ric5]

I have pedals by Line6, Tech21, MXR, VHT, Marshall, Rolls, DOD, and Behringer

 

[AlexBassMP]

My main tone is built around my Tech21 Sansamp Bass Driver deluxe. It has been my Preamp/OD/DI since December 2015. No matter the gig or the back line..I always send the signal from the Sansamp FOH and use the amp to hear me on stage. Sound guys love me.

Recently I started to stack it with a Boss ODB3 . I love Boss pedals. They are built to last and they do what they'er supossed to do and you can find them in the used market for a reasonable price. I remember the faces of my bandmats the first time I used the ODB3 as overdrive instead the Sansamp. They said "man..that's the tone" . You can rely on Boss products and ,in Steve Vai's words, "If a Boss pedal breaks on tour, you can buy another one almost everywhere". I have a Boss Me50B multifx which I use a lot at home. I used it in a lot of gigs until 2014.

In another level I like Zoom stuff. I've been playing live with a Zoom MS60B since 2014..If you want a multifx in a budget you can't go wrong with Zoom. The sounds are so good for the price tag. I have a Zoom B1on which I use as a headphone amp and metronome at home.

 

[whitedk57]

My pedalboard consists of...

• Line 6 G30 wireless receiver
• Pitchblack tuner (I mainly use my Snark, but this is a backup)
  
• Aguilar Tone Hammer

My only variation is to replace the DI (Tone Hammer) with either... (meaning they are not on my board at the moment, but sitting in a drawer)

• DarkGlass B7K Ultra
• Sansamp Programmable Bass DI

 

[Space Pickle]

gotta catch ‘em all

 

[Killing Floor]

Yeah, I was pondering the Collider, but ultimately, I think I'd rather delay and reverb each have their own pedal. The pair has a bit more versatility than the Collider as well. Don't get me wrong, the Collider seems like a great pedal and would definitely save some money in the long run. But I think by the end of next year be buying the Ventris as the last pedal for my setup. Probably going to add the EQ2 and Nemesis towards the end of this year after I've paid some previous purchases off. Probably buy the hothand next time I have $100 to spare.

I totally didn't mean to become a Source Audio fanboy. Their pedals just cover so much ground.

Yep. One of my all time favorite half-useless pedals is the Bass Micro Synth from Electroharmonix. Not that expensive, not entirely useful but super fun to toss in once in a while.

 

[micguy]

My tuner and octave pedal are the same brand. Everything else on the board by my desk is a different brand. But, I have a second board, which has the same tuner, DI, and low pass filter as the first board - if something works, I'm not above two of the same brand and kind - especially with "utility pedals".

 

[Fuzzbass]

I mostly own Darkglass and Tech 21. I wouldn't say I'm loyal, however my go-to pedals are from them, and they both have a great track record for quality products and customer service, so whenever they come out with something new I pay attention, and I'm willing to take chances. Not all of those chances paid off: I've sold off a pedal or two from each manufacturer -- not because they weren't good, to the contrary they were cool, but the bottom line was that I owned other pedals by the same manufacturer that I liked better, and I limit my total pedal collection to around two dozen tops.

That said, I'm totally open to whatever's cool. I also own pedals from Brimstone Audio, Damnation Audio, Idiotbox, Dunwich, Reiner Amplification, DSM, VFE, FEA, Empress, OvniFX, Becos, Origin... and a couple more I can't think of offhand.

 

[RayWithFlats]

If I had the money I could go for an all-Crazy Tube Circuits board, all the demos I’ve seen of their stuff sound fantastic.

 

[Liko]

I think the brand loyalty idea is also a different animal for bass effects vs guitar effects. Boutique builders and companies that do mods had to push the envelope to tailor certain effects to bass players when there weren't any. As that happened, it forced the hand (or opened the eyes) of bigger companies to create something bass friendly if not bass-specific.

Not quite sure I agree with this view of history. About the early 2000s, there were basically two players in the game of designing stuff specifically to go between a bassist's axe and the amplifier system, and one of those was Boss, who has been putting bass-specific circuits in their trademark enclosures since the 80s. Tech21 of course was also really big at the time, and still is, though focused primarily on the preamp concept, folding distortion and compression into DI-ready boxes that, for the average bassist, may well be all you need on stage.

The only other pedal maker that was in any way getting my attention as a bassist in the early 2000s was EHX, with quirky stuff like the BassBalls envelope filter. Unfortunately their QC at the time was still pretty bad. Not only has it gotten much better, EHX have also become a real friend of the bassist in relatively recent years. But, I don't really see that happening as the result of any market pressure from other makers. Aguilar is another relatively recent entrant into the bass effects market, though they've been making bass amps and cabinets much longer than that, so they were a well-established name before the Tone Hammer preamp hit the market.

IMHO, the "boutique" US builders that have become well-known beyond their home regions in the 2000s and 2010s, like Robert Keeley, Mike Fuller (Fulltone), Brian Wampler, Josh Scott (JHS) etc. have had to be pushed quite hard toward the low end by endless nagging from this potential customer base asking them "when ya gonna make a bass pedal?", in order for them to throw us a bone at all. In the copy for their Low Blow pedal, Wampler admits as much, while lampooning offerings like the Fulltone Bass-Drive and Keeley Filaments without really mentioning them, as "just another guitar pedal gussied up for bass".

And Josh Scott, much as I like him, really doesn't seem interested at all in directly courting the bass market. Some effects of his, like his Lucky Cat delay and his Emperor chorus, work just fine on bass and he's happy to sell them to you, but anything that requires specific focus on the idiosyncrasies of bass vs guitar, like gain, just doesn't seem appealing to him. Of his more famous gain pedals, only the Moonshine has a clean blend, and that's a Tubescreamer circuit so the characteristic mid hump is not exactly bass-friendly.

That's fine, where there's a market demand, a supply will grow, and makers like Darkglass are all too willing to focus completely on the subtle nuances of bass distortion. I shouldn't be surprised that Darkglass is Finnish; with the amount of serious metal music coming out of Scandinavia it really is no surprise to see quality metal equipment from there too.

 

[Grahams Groove]

Not quite sure I agree with this view of history. About the early 2000s, there were basically two players in the game of designing stuff specifically to go between a bassist's axe and the amplifier system, and one of those was Boss, who has been putting bass-specific circuits in their trademark enclosures since the 80s. Tech21 of course was also really big at the time, and still is, though focused primarily on the preamp concept, folding distortion and compression into DI-ready boxes that, for the average bassist, may well be all you need on stage.

The only other pedal maker that was in any way getting my attention as a bassist in the early 2000s was EHX, with quirky stuff like the BassBalls envelope filter. Unfortunately their QC at the time was still pretty bad. Not only has it gotten much better, EHX have also become a real friend of the bassist in relatively recent years. But, I don't really see that happening as the result of any market pressure from other makers. Aguilar is another relatively recent entrant into the bass effects market, though they've been making bass amps and cabinets much longer than that, so they were a well-established name before the Tone Hammer preamp hit the market.

IMHO, the "boutique" US builders that have become well-known beyond their home regions in the 2000s and 2010s, like Robert Keeley, Mike Fuller (Fulltone), Brian Wampler, Josh Scott (JHS) etc. have had to be pushed quite hard toward the low end by endless nagging from this potential customer base asking them "when ya gonna make a bass pedal?", in order for them to throw us a bone at all. In the copy for their Low Blow pedal, Wampler admits as much, while lampooning offerings like the Fulltone Bass-Drive and Keeley Filaments without really mentioning them, as "just another guitar pedal gussied up for bass".

And Josh Scott, much as I like him, really doesn't seem interested at all in directly courting the bass market. Some effects of his, like his Lucky Cat delay and his Emperor chorus, work just fine on bass and he's happy to sell them to you, but anything that requires specific focus on the idiosyncrasies of bass vs guitar, like gain, just doesn't seem appealing to him. Of his more famous gain pedals, only the Moonshine has a clean blend, and that's a Tubescreamer circuit so the characteristic mid hump is not exactly bass-friendly.

That's fine, where there's a market demand, a supply will grow, and makers like Darkglass are all too willing to focus completely on the subtle nuances of bass distortion. I shouldn't be surprised that Darkglass is Finnish; with the amount of serious metal music coming out of Scandinavia it really is no surprise to see quality metal equipment from there too.

Yeah, that's a fair point on Boss. I didn't start using enough effects for a board until the last 5 or so years, but was aware of what was out there in the early 2000s. I used occasional filter, phaser, etc. I also was much less picky because there were not many demos, options, etc.

I just searched for a history, because that got me thinking. Their first couple 'bass specific' pedals - CE-2B, BF-2B, and GE-7B were in '87. Then nothing new that was bass-specific again until the early 90s. I wish I could find a history of the releases from Dunlop/MXR. As you mentioned, EHX was early to the game - maybe the bassballs was the first bass-specific box from them? Not sure when the BMS came out.

A comprehensive history of bass specific effects would be a cool project. Probably not a huge market of nerds wanting to read up on that, but I'd dig it. I'm struggling to think of who else would be in those early rounds aside from Boss, EHX, and MXR. Like you said, Tech21 started in the late 80s, but I didn't think the bass DIs hit until mid/late 90s.

 

[Fuzzbass]

I mostly own Darkglass and Tech 21

Just to define "mostly": the pedals below represent slightly less than half of my pedal collection. Of course it all started with the SABDDI decades ago -- wish I still had one for sentimental reasons (and because it's a great OD) but it had a nice long run as my only pedal and I'm on to other flavors.

I've owned other gear from these manufacturers... Alpha Omega and YYZ are just two examples. It was all good, but as you can see I'm just keeping my top 4 dirt pedals of each brand (the DG HB is clean only, as printed).