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Chorus/Flange for fretless

Chef

Chef

In Memoriam
May 23, 2004
41,814
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Columbia MO
Disclosures
Staff Reviewer; Bass Gear Magazine
#1
1) I know ZERO about effects and what's available
2) I have a fretless Fender Precision, and fretless Fender Jaco, and a fretless Rob Allen MB2-5.
It seems to me as those many fretless players use just a tad bit of chorus/flange (am I even using the right term?!?!) both for color, and, perhaps, to mask intonation being not dead-on perfect....

Whats a good, cost efficient pedal device for this?

thanks
 
#2
Whatever you choose, go for one with a sine wave LFO unless you like those pitch-bendy "corners" on the usual triangle wave models...
 
#3
bholder said:
Whatever you choose, go for one with a sine wave LFO unless you like those pitch-bendy "corners" on the usual triangle wave models...
Click to expand...

I have no idea what that means, because as I noted previously, I’m an idiot.
If you could explain what sine wave LFO is and what products have that, I’d be better educated for it.
Thanks
 
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#4
waveform.gif


Sine wave bends smoothly with no corners, the others all have corners and big discontinuity jumps - what they cause in the sound is a pronounced pitch-warbly bendy garbling around the corners in the low frequency oscillator sweep. Sine wave LFO sweeps are smooth with no pitch garbling at the corners (since there are no corners). Some of the pricier ones have waveform options, but I'm thinking a cheap old used chorus might be just the thing - for example, the Boss CE-2B Bass Chorus can often be found cheap on ebay, I think that's got a sine wave LFO, I have one, I'll check.

Edit: I checked, it's a triangle, gets bendy unless rate is very slow. I know there are cheapish ones with the sine wave feature, just not coming up with one right now.
 
Last edited:
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#7
I’d hope to gig with them if they work well.
I’m not lookin for a big dramatic effect.
Sting and Jaco both used a touch of something, and that’s kinda my goal.
 
#9
A man in your situation should get a Zoom MS60B. It offers numerous options to audition, so you can edumacate yourself on, for instance, differences between chorus and flange.

It’s pretty easy to learn, and if you don’t need it to be more than one effect, very easy to configure for gigging. Good quality sounds as well.

Before I got an HX Effects, the MS60B was my chorus of choice. I stacked three Effects to get my chorus sound, switched on and off with one stomp.
 
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#10
Chef said:
Thank you, that’s helpful
Does LFO stand for something?
Click to expand...
Low Frequency Oscillator - it's the electronic sub-gadget that creates the "sweep" control affected by the speed knob. The units with true sine wave LFOs of course cost more, catch-22. Try a cheapie first, maybe, to decide whether you like it?
 
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#13
yeah a lot of fretless dudes use chorus. I also really like the sound of vibrato on fretless. jaco used it a lot I believe.

a standard workhorse that's easy to operate and classic is the boss ceb3

Jeff Berlin swears by the EBS unichorus, as he talks about and demos here
 
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#15
Chef said:
I have no idea what that means, because as I noted previously, I’m an idiot.
If you could explain what sine wave LFO is and what products have that, I’d be better educated for it.
Thanks
Click to expand...

I have quite a few pedals but not much clarity on what and how things work.


I had a Boss Bass Chorus-3 which worked fine but traded it for a Tech21. It's quite user friendly, ie even I can use it.
 
#19
Personally I would recommend the EBS. It's what I use and I've never looked back. Simple controls, killer sound and 3 "different" modulation effects in one... the flanger gets you a killer Roger Water's like sound. Considering that these can be had for around $100 on the used market, I say look no farther!

pchedrfg1agm0fjwvs9e.jpg


EBS UniChorus Bass Modulation Pedal
 
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#20
I will second the Zoom MS60B because it offers a lot of tasty choices for chorus, flange,detune (mild chorus), phase shifters, dual phaser, modulated delays plus other effects that you may find useful with experimentation. There are also some very useful compressor and limiters, preamps and other things you may never use but you never can tell.
 
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