What you are trying to accomplish is fairly simple, however, in your conversation, you've change directions a few times. Boutique-ish, nano board, 2 preamp pedals, It sounds like someone is either never satisfied or making too much money. I'm a bit confused. Your main equipment should be bass guitar, power amplifier, tube preamplifier, and real good speakers. If you have difficulty in achieving good sound with this equipment, it may be time to open a few books. Rather than concentrating on stuff to put on the floor so you can trip over and break it, invest in serious power and tone. If your goal is recording, that is a completely different subject. I spent more time studying the specifications, which enables me to know how the equipment will perform. Specifications play an important roll in producing tone and power. It's your money.
i too have been going through this above mentioned scenario on and off for the last 10 plus years, my case being never quite satisfied and most of the time having the option of using my personal amp, i too am running two preamps to achieve my tone(9 pedals total on my board), one at the beginning of my chain (blue tube bass driver) for mids into drive section and one at the end (blue tube tube enhancer)for treble and bass with slight scoop ,with great results so far i might add, i might eliminate one or the other at some point soon, but this is mainly for live sound, as i plan on running 2-3 levels of gain, going into envelope filter into chorus into preamp pedal then good DI(so my effects are FOH) so i can run through whatever solid state amp, set it flat and still get the tone i want out of any solid state and FOH mix, so i too am guilty of this. i have a truly awesome tube bass amp, a fender ps 300, but it dosent have an XLR on mine(later ones did), so thats where the di will come in handy(looking for either tube works 4001 or demeter tube direct). i will say that in the past i did the pedal preamp thing to fix either my amp sound, bass, or both, then i found a mid-eighties ampeg svt II pro, and that amp did wonders for me, i still used fx live, but didnt need any preamp pedal for my sound i do now for the above reasons. i will say that i like the fender bass amp i have at the moment better than the ampeg i once had, and my blue tube pedals simulate the sound of it just cranked to hell(the last pedal in my signal or preamp is semi flat with a slight scoop, just real warm sounding), but most venues wont let you really crank up, unless you sidewash, yeah i get slight noise, but its never noticeable in a live setting. you do get what you pay for when it comes to gear(most of the time), and ive been spending lots of
of time researching tone, frequencies, signal chain, etc, consulting sound guys and guitar players so i can do the pedalboard thing right this time around(i had 2 full boss pedal boards at one point with over 20 cheapy pedals and lots of problems with this) ive been playing for 20 years and am still learning all the time real basic stuff that would of saved me alot of time and money in the past, but sometimes the best lessons are learned thru mistakes, but yeah, your bass into your amp should sound great by itself as a good starting point always!!!!
