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Influential Effect Usage

#25
Not sure exactly. The first effects pedal I ever bought for bass was an MXR Phase 90 back about 1983-84, and I don't remember how/why I went that way...the players I was emulating at the time (mostly Geddy Lee and Bruce Thomas) wouldn't even have used a phaser.

I ditched that pedal pretty quickly, but then came back to using chorus and compression a couple of years later after discovering jazz fusion...guitarist John Scofield ended up being a big influence as he played a heavily-chorused bass for his own Electric Outlet disc in 1984. Also experimented with octave after hearing Gary Grainger use it for the title track on Sco's Blue Matter disc. It helped that the players I was jamming with had an Electro-Harmonix Polychorus and BOSS OC-3 laying around!
 
#26
Kwesi said:
No one. I thought to myself "Why should synths have all the fun?" and went from there. After that is was all about getting different sounds out of my bass that still fit the bass role but had different and fun characteristics to them. It was kind of like cooking; "Yeah, this tastes great but if I added this, could it taste even better?" Since getting into effects there have been plenty of players whom I love that use effects but they weren't what set off the initial spark.
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I'm with this guy... however, I don't really care if what I'm doing fits the bass role or not.
 
#27
insomniac2295 said:
Who influenced you to first really get into effects?
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In one word....HENDRIX!!!!!!!! He showed the way as far as I'm concerned.

Ironically though, I don't really like Hendrix-type effects like fuzz, wah, Leslie-type and octavia for bass.

For bass I tend to favor chorus, delay, flanger, phaser and OD rather than fuzz, wah, envelopes, octaver, poly, synth and the such etc. I like '80s-90's alt/new-wave bassists like Peter Hook (Joy Division) and Simon Gallup (The Cure.)
 
#30
I bought an OD soon after I bought my first bass. Always wanted to be able to get different sounds out of the instrument. The OD was all I used for a couple years... Then I got in a band and they wanted to do some Muse covers... fast forward three years, I now have about 20 pedals (8 currently in use in the pedalboard).
 
#32
bongomania said:
I was being completely sincere! :D My early influences were Devo, Zappa, Sun Ra, Laurie Anderson, Wendy/Walter Carlos, etc... So I started with modular synths and effects units back in '85. I didn't pick up bass until about 2006.
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That explains a few things. I was also heavily into synthesizers as well in the 70's: Synergy, Tomita, Roger Powell, Tangerine Dram, Kraftwerk, Gino Vanelli and Gary Wright.
 
#33
Matt Taylor from Motion City Soundtrack uses OD on a couple songs, and believe it or not, Mark Hoppus when he was doing +44 was using alot of OD, phasers, and choruses. Apart from that, I finally have a great tone so I figured playing with effects is the "next step". Just picked up a Bass Big Muff Pi today because there are parts where my band needs a 3rd guitar, so I figure I can run the Muff with the Dry setting and fill some of that role. Will likely add a chorus and my dad's '70 Small Stone later on.
 
#34
Greg Edwards of Failure was kind of the first player where I really started paying attention to distortion/fuzz on bass guitar, and how great it can sound. But the bass lines that always seemed to have the biggest impact on me, in terms of wanting to experiment with effects to see what I could make an electric bass sound like, were the ones found on Depeche Mode albums and NIN's "The Downward Spiral".
 

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