Help I suck getting effects for covers

Neither of those songs have effects on them.

The RHCP is a jazz bass with flats being played aggressively. The Pito Perez song sounds (to me anyway) like an active bass with a bridge humbucker and rounds.

They are more or less being played clean.

 

Im not sure why youre having problems finding good usable tones out of the gear you have. As far as the pedals go, eesh! in my opinion, those arent so usable. Thats just me though. I would start by getting a good dirt/OD pedal, like a hardwire CM2 tube overdrive. What other effects are you into/need?? We can all probably recommend some goods ones for you. Let us know more about what TYPE of sound you are trying to accomplish. That chili peppers song is pretty clean if I remember correctly right?

 

What is you EQ on your bass and amp set at? You should totally be able to get a great tone from the Warwick and the ampeg. Are you using that digitech all the time? They may be your culprit. Have you ever thought about getting a good preamp? Like the B7K, Sansamp VT or BDDI?

 

I'm a big fan of the B7K, used the BDDI for years and have owned the VT Bass. All very good for what they are, but the clips posted are clean bass.

But I definitely agree with tweaking the EQ as well as working on technique.

Get your tone into the ballpark and then don't worry about it. Much more important to nail your parts than to sound just like the record. And since one bass has flats and another rounds, you're not going to get both sounds with one bass anyway!

 

+1 on nailing the playing. You dont need to sound exactly like the records. As long as youre playing the right stuff thats all that counts. But again, look at the way youre EQ'ing your rig and bass. And try playing without the digitech pedal for a while. IMO, a preamp pedal is what it sounds like you may need to get more body or "warmth" to your sound.

 

Hey no worries, as long as you ask, it's a lot better to learn that way. A preamp in pedal form as we've been speaking of, such as the Darkglass B7K and the Sansamp VT bass and Bass Driver DI, are pedals that serve a preamp to your amp/combo/rig. It's adds more, lets say body, depending on how you set your bass, amp and the pedal. The VT and the B7K have a lot of different tones in them. More so than the bass driver in my opinion. They're all great pedals. I know I've used them in the past when my rig needed a little extra umfp or flavor. I have a use everyday the B7K. It's part of my sound now. Maybe try searching here on TalkBass or google them. Do some research on YouTube and so forth if you can. It may be just what you're looking for.

 

In other words a pedal preamp or a rack mount preamp with give much more tonal and EQ options.

 

It is more complex than this, but in general a preamp is a powered device that changes the tone/sound of your bass. Most preamps have EQ knobs either 2 band (bass and treble), 3 band (bass, mids and treble) or 4 band (bass, low mids, high mids, treble), possibly a graphic EQ etc.

Your amp has a preamp. It's the section of your amp that lets you EQ the sound. Active basses also have a preamp built in, an onboard preamp as they are called so you can make adjustments to the bass, treble and/or mids on the bass itself.

A preamp pedal is the same idea, just as an effect pedal instead of being built into your amp or bass.

As a pedal it has the advantage of being able to be turned on and off. Also, preamp pedals often also have overdrive or amp simulation circuits that most amps (and pretty much all on board preamps) don't have.

If you bought a preamp pedal you'd jut connect it with cables between your bass and amp and use it like any other pedal. Some people like to have their preamp pedals on all the time to shape the sound and some people use them like an effect. For instance, switching from a fingerstyle to slap sound or from clean bass to overdriven bass if your preamp pedal has that feature.

Again, there's more to it than that, but hopefully that explanation helps.

 

This is a very good if not tightly broad statement that is very well explained. Good job. I couldn't have explained it better myself.

 

If you are looking for a versatile pedal, I strongly recommend the B7K!
Recorded a cover with it today! Unfortunately it's not really the genre you are looking for, but you can get all kinds of aggressive and punchy tones with this pedal. Works great for most RHCP stuff!

Here is the cover:

 

A proper preamp is a small amplifier that takes instrument signal from pickups and makes it useable by a power amplifier. All instrument amps have a preamp with tone shaping and a power amplifier.

"Preamp" in the fx forum is a loose term that can be anything that shapes the tone from the bass before it gets amped. Many pedals get used as "always on" effects so folks take to calling them preamps, which they really are not.

 

That's a good one, the sansamp bass driver DI. Also known as the BDDI. If you can grab it, go for it, it's a good preamp pedal. I prefer the darkglass B7K over the BDDI any day though. I'm sure you could get one shipped to you. Check out their site:

http://www.darkglass.com/m/

 

There are no particular rules about EQ. Don't boost bass large on one and cut bass large on the other, sort of common sense stuff. Don't make wild changes in boosting/cutting between adjacent EQ bands. Don't put everything at noon and leave it there for all time either!

If it sounds better to break the rules, break the rules. EQ is there to make it your own sound and compensate for frequencies that pop out annoyingly loudly in some rooms.

Slapping usually gets a mid cut.

Generally your common bass cabs don't make the useful amounts of the low low bass frequencies advertised, before they start to fart out. Cutting the low lows in the EQ lets you play a lot louder without farting the speakers.

You can get a lot of tonal changes by moving your finger plucking position up and down between the bridge and neck. Also the amount of meat you use to grab at the string when plucking can be varied by going more sideways than straight across with tips, producing big variation of tone.

 

You can get a BDDI from the classifieds for around $130, plus a little extra for posting to Mexico.