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fx to replace a guitar player :)

mactac

mactac

Nov 28, 2005
1,754
189
Victoria, BC, Canada
www.orange-records.com
#1
OK, so our 4-piece band (2 guit, bass,drums) is likely dropping 1 guitar player, so we will now be a bass,drums and guit/singer


so....

sometimes when the guitar player is singing, the guitar drops out & I'm lef ton my own...which is fine most of the time, but for some songs, we are really going to miss the rhythm guitar as far as filling up some of the sonic space & excitement

I'm looking for an effect that will help out this situation...

i'm thinking maybe some sort of effect that adds an octave above with good tone... what's the best for this?

any other ideas? chorus would be an obvious, but sometimes chorus is not appropriate

the band i play in does mostly rock... think tragically hip, neil young, and some more driving stuff.
 
#5
1. the guitar player can play & sing at the same time, just sometimes there is some tone that is missing

2. yes, drivey lines, etc etc. of course. BUT sometimes an effect WILL help ... that's why they exist.

i don't really want this to turn into a "fx are good/bad" thread...there are too many of those already... i just had a pretty simple question....
 
#9
You might want to check out the Unibass, but personally, I didn't like its distortion sound much, I thought it sounded a bit cheesy. Using another distortion pedal together with the Unibass may probably fix this, though.
 
#11
mactac said:
any other ideas? chorus would be an obvious, but sometimes chorus is not appropriate
Click to expand...

If the basslines aren't too complex and your drummer isn't thrown by playing to a prerecorded bassline, you could try getting something like a Boss Loop Station or Lexicon Jam-Man and layering some lines on top of each other.

Then again, the guitarist could do the same thing and you wouldn't have to spend any money.
 
#13
Sadly, in a situation like that, you just gotta play more.

We had 2 guitarists for a while, I was stuck playing root notes and simple lines. When we went down to one guitarist, it left lots of room for more complicated lines and chords.
 
#19
ArwinH said:
To fill up the sound during solos I've been using a big muff with high tone and sustain settings so that all of the bottom drops out and I'm left with a very guitaristic sound, I then mix it with my clean signal with a boss ls2 pedal. Works like magic for me.
Click to expand...
Yes - this is very similar to the "UniBOSS method". The LS-2 and a distortion pedal would take the place of the extra distortion-channel guitar amp that's mentioned in my example here:

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=190134&highlight=uniboss

The advantage of adding the CEB-3 is that you get a little pitch-shift that very-much makes it sound like a seperate instrument (I know what you said about chorusing, but it really doesn't sound like chorus when used this way), AND you have the low-cut function to knock-out the lowest octave or-so. It works very well.

Joe
 
#20
But the tough part is finding an effect that suddenly starts playing in another key and claims "we've always done it that way." Or an effect that forgets when its solo comes in and steps all over the vocals. And of course, this effect's volume knob has a ratcheting mechanism so that it can only be turned UP.

Until then, there is no replacement for the guitarist.
 

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