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How many 'always on' pedals are in your chain

#161
NickyBass said:
how many pedals do you keep on your board that are always on?
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I don't have any pedals that are literally "always on" ...my sound when I play through one or two or three pedalboards is essentially identical to my sound when I play through zero pedals (not accounting for any signal loss/degradation due to the long path), because I want to be able to go pedal-less for gigs that don't require any overt signal modification.

However, I do have two pedals that are "always listening" ...which is an entirely different premise from "always on" but it also sets them apart as distinctly different from 99% of the stompboxes on the market.
 
#166
73392CF0-AD1C-478F-8591-1CD75BAD6BA9.jpeg


Two always on- compressor and chorus (just a wee hint of chorus)
 
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#171
mr80htz said:
The tone purists would hate this thread
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It's funny. I was never big into pedals, but there is so much cool stuff these days. The way I see it, our favorite recorded bass tones are not pure DI bass. There are a lot of pieces to the signal chain, all coloring the tone along the way. A lot of the posts in this thread aren't too far out there. A buffer, HPF, compressor, tube saturation, preamps, eq etc. These are things that would be used on almost every recorded bass track in some form or another. And even the ones that are a bit more processed (fuzz, distortion) seem to fit in the genre. It's such a personal journey.
 
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#173
NickyBass said:
It's funny. I was never big into pedals, but there is so much cool stuff these days. The way I see it, our favorite recorded bass tones are not pure DI bass. There are a lot of pieces to the signal chain, all coloring the tone along the way. A lot of the posts in this thread aren't too far out there. A buffer, HPF, compressor, tube saturation, preamps, eq etc. These are things that would be used on almost every recorded bass track in some form or another. And even the ones that are a bit more processed (fuzz, distortion) seem to fit in the genre. It's such a personal journey.
Click to expand...
I wasn't either, but once I broke the seal, I was all in. I don't use effects for effects sake, but it definitely opens a new angle for how I can approach writing a bass line and the band I'm in is well suited for it.

Regarding the "tone purists", I don't really understand how their amp fits into this mindset.
 
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#177
My main bass pedalboard is still my two Boss BCB-3 boxes, with 5 Boss pedals and one tc electronic Spark.

TU-2 Chromatic Tuner (the buffer is always on)
AD-2 Acoustic Preamp (always on when playing piezo pickups)
BC-1X Bass Comp (always on)
tc electronic Spark booster (switched in/out as needed)
BB-1X Bass Driver (always on)
RV-6 Reverb (only on when appropriate, which is to say "not often")

So, I guess my answer is "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?", since I am almost always playing the piezo pickups on my StingRay.

I'm slowly transitioning my second bass pedalboard, which currently uses a DSM & Humboldt Simplifier Bass Station and One Control BJFe Blackberry Bass Overdrive, toward the Tech21NYC SansAmp Bass Driver DI v2 and Q\Strip, so for that board, I guess it will be four "always on" pedals, the BDDI, the Q, my tc electronic BodyRez acoustic resonance enhancer, and my tc electronic SpectraComp compressor, or the Blackberry, Simplifier, BodyRez, and SpectaComp.

In general, because of the way I prefer to play, I will always have a preamp, piezo enhancer (really just a specialized EQ pedal), a compressor, and an amp sim of some kind. Everything else is negotiable.
 

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