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Essentials for a gigging bassist's pedal board?

4

4stringfiend

Jan 15, 2012
90
1
SF Bay Area
#1
Now I know this is kind of arbitrary, but I am looking into a pedal board because I've been getting to the point where I can confidently play gigs. :bassist:
I see that pedal boards have 6+ slots on them, but what could a bassist do with that? I know that a pedal tuner is the first thing I'm going to buy, even before a pedal board. Afterwards what effects are most common for a bassist to have?

Thank you in advance! This performing thing is pretty fun, maybe fun enough to do for a living :hiding:
 
#5
none. just a cable.

and yes, i do have a full board. but none of the pedals are essential save the tuner.

now that we've got that out of the way, i've greatly enjoyed having a compressor (Demeter Opto-Comp), an overdrive (currently a Fuzzrocious Rat Tail), an octaver (MXR M288 BOD), a chorus (EBS UniChorus), and a delay (TC Electronic NovaRepeater).
I take this board to most gigs, but not all, and end up using only the compressor (always on) and the tuner 80% of the time.
so none are essential, but all are fun and can be useful.
 
#6
alec said:
What sort of music are you playing? Any particular bands/bassists who's tone you're chasing?
Click to expand...

Hard rock and metal mostly, and I play a little bit of alternative. I don't really try to emulate, but I pull a lot of influence from David Ellefson and Rex Brown. Playing that genre makes me feel like I need a full pedal board. I'm Broken by Pantera, for example, I want to be able to get that tone.
 
#8
The Darkglass B3K nails the Rex Brown sound on "I'm broken". You can achieve that tone with the VT Bass also but the B3K is right on. I agree with Trevor. I have a few pedals but the ones I use the most are the Korg tuner, SA Bass Driver and the MXR compressor.
 
#9
I don't have a board yet, but maybe in the future... anyway, I make sure I have my pedal tuner, EQ, and compression pedal - that's the bare minimum I'd say. Whether you're using your own amp or using someone else's, you'll always be able to dial in your barebones tone.

The next essential thing is probably some kind of preamp/DI, and some overdrive/dirt.

I also tuck my multieffects in the gig bag, just in case...
 
#10
The only effect that I consider necessary in this day and age is some sort of distortion, and even that isn't necessary in all types of music. But it's getting more ubiquitous, so I'd say it's pretty necessary for a lot of folks. Some people consider comps necessary but I don't. I used to use one but I forgot to turn it on one night and so greatly enjoyed the increased dynamic range (even though I didn't compress all that much) that I never used one again.
 
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#11
I second the opinion that you don't really need anything if you have good equipment and know how to use it. I don't have an amp or a head though, so my most essential piece of equipment is a preamp, because I don't even know what kind of setup I will be playing with when I gig at a bar/club for the first time, or whether there will even be a bass amp there. So the preamp takes care of that and makes me feel safe that I will have the good tone that I'm used to. If you had a PT Mini or Nano, I would put a tuner, preamp, compressor, OD, octave, envelope filter, and chorus, in that order of priority, as much of them as there was space.
 
#12
What you can do with pedals is really up to you, what you want to do. Does a bassist need to fill up a six space pedalboard? Nah,....but being able to throw wall of sound, noise, feedback and clear a room is pretty fun,....then my guitarist get's a turn. :D We are artsy fartsy like that though.

As far as pedalboards,...there are definitely smaller boards out there:

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but those cost money (obviously not as much as bigger boards),...if you only intend to use a few, just put em on stage,...hook em up and play,...or if you want to have a little convenience for time saving sake,...DIY your own pedalboard (search Ikea Gorm or DIY pedalboards here in the FX subforum).

Tuner,...they are handy. I have one at the end of my chain that also acts as a mute (as mentioned previously) when I'm done being an unruly arse.

Distortion good, Fuzz better (for me at least).

Perhaps some sort of preamp like the Xotics RC Booster or BB Booster. If you are using a tube amp,...a clean boost would be neat.

I'm willing to bet a lot of Rex's tone was all Spector into SVT (at least live). I've been out of the Pantera loop for a long time though so I have no idea if he used effects. That said the recommendations for a VT Bass are not surprising as it's sort of a poor man's/Solid State amp user's SVT.
 
#15
chaosMK said:
I don't think you need effects if you have good equipment and know how to use it. If you feel the need to fill up a 6 slot board, just use whatever is fun to you.
Click to expand...

+1
Tuner is all a bass player really needs imo .....unless you're doing specific music that requires an effect.

Don't need a compressor imo. Nice to have but not essential
Don't need overdrive if your amp has a bit - unless your playing metal and then just a little is enuf.

An octaver can be fun if you have a specific need for one.

The best sounding bass effect by far are envelope filters imo but they're only useful if you play funky stuff.

But how would you fill up a board with 6 bass pedals.
Effects don't change the tone much on bass imo - nowhere near what they do on guitars.

Everytime I see a bass player gig with lots of pedals I see him hit the switch and then I wait to hear a tone difference and then.... I wait &...... wait some more..... hear nothing and then he turns it off hehehe :hmm:
Some bass players stuff around all night with their pedals tweaking this & that and I can never actually hear any of them.
I've played in bands with bass players that do that too - always funny to watch hehe
 
#16
The only two essential pedals I can think of is the tuner and EQ pedal. That is the beginning of a board that will bridge you to any genre of music.

A compressor is an all-around good one to throw on there two. With that, you can play all the clean-sound gigs you want.
 
#17
Start researching, and watching youtube demos and get some ideas of what the different effects do. I disagree with Waxhead, it is known when I add effects to my signal chain. Those dudes must SKEERED.
Also I would say check Dr Scientist The Elements for OD/Distortion. The pedal can also cover a bit of fuzz range and clean boost. It takes some tweaking to understand how to get it there but with some time it is super useful. It is THE gain-based utility pedal.
If you want to get sludgey/doomy check out MountainKing Electronics Megalith. ALso MountainKing's Magnetar is amazing. Those are both fuzz pedals. A Low Pass Filter could be handy as well or a Wah pedal is fun too. Octave pedals can be handy also.
 
#19
There are no "essential" pedals, but the pedals I find useful are what I have on my current Pedaltrain Mini:

Compressor- 3Leaf PWNZOR
Octave - MXR Bass Octave Deluxe or Boss OC-2
Filter - 3Leaf Proton
Dirt/OD - Xotic BB Preamp (Guitar version)
Tuner - Turbo tuner (doubles as a mute switch)
DI - Sansamp Paradriver

I can cover just about anything within normal parameters with this setup. If I'm doing something where I need chorus I'll pull the OD. If I need something odd, I'll add an M5 on the side.
 

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