My Pedalboard, pt. 1

yuck, i hate noise suppressors.
its not a rat if it doesnt feedback. and you can just switch it on and off to mute it.

 

Look at a Tech 21 Bass VT.
Good luck with everything.

S.

 

bass>tuner>hum>rat>chorus>amp

use your FX loop if you feel it works better, but those pedals might sound better before your amp.

Why distort your preamp tone?

The rat with chorus will sound awesome. deep, slow chorus. nice.

 

Good luck bro. The best thing to do is just play around. I got back into the pedal game around 2 years ago, and I am really glad I did. Read TB reviews, but verify if they work for you. Looks like a good start to a board.

One thing I would suggest is to get the CS-3 modded by Humphrey mods, apparently this makes the compressor so much more useable on bass, or so I've heard

 

I'm not a big fan of fuzz and buzz with the bass, but, whatever you're into.

Try this:



I think it's the bass' job to hold down the low notes and work with the drummer.
Let the guitars buzz and howl.

S.

 

+1 My understanding is that the Hum Debugger somehow kills the hum from your single coil pickups leaving the rest of your chain quiet.... until you don't want it that way any more. You don't really want to kill the noise after a dirt as that's part of the fun.

 

O yeah? I live in Decatur and am a musician in the central illinois area, mostly Decatur and Champaign. Small world isn't it?

 

That sounds like great start to me. I wouldn't worry about the humdebugger... unless/until you have noise issues(ie single coil hum), and even then I'd try to fix the problem rather than pedalbandaid it. I've never heard this, but I'm assuming that the rat is known for being loud, and that's why you wanted the EHX? Either way you don't need it now... The cs-3 isn't the best compressor in the world, and you might not even want compression. I personally don't care for what it does to my sound, and only use it sparingly when dealing with envelope volume spikes.

If you're anything like the rest of us- This 'whole day reading on talkbass' will be just a tiny drop in the bucket by the end of the month lol The VT bass and tuner should hold you off for a while, and you can continue reading up on various effects, listening to clips etc, before making your next buy.

I've been thinking about the VT bass, sansamp paradriver, and a few others lately myself.

 

It may not be necessary.

This is how I think it is supposed to work. (Disclaimer: I do not own a hum debugger) Your single coil bass makes a certain amount of hum just being what it is. Usually it is reasonably quiet; until you throw some high gain goodness in the chain, at which point it this minor noise becomes an ever-present wall even while muting the strings.

The debugger is supposed to silence your single coil hum so that when you throw a high gain pedal into the chain, it only amplifies the bass tones and not the hum created by your pickups. If you put the debugger behind the Rat, it will be forced to 'debug' the sound of the hum, and then all the amplified distorted hum on top of that. I don't think it was designed to do that.

You may decide that the Debugger is unnecessary, but you'd be somewhat surprised how much noise from a gain pedal originates from the input (I was when I started experimenting with it).

Good luck.