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Were to find Bass rackmount effects ?????

Davyo

Davyo

Davyo
Nov 26, 2008
943
360
Las Vegas, Nv
www.davyo.com
#1
Ok,,, color me lost,,, Im a life long bass player that has always used pedals for all my effects,,, not that I really use many effects in the first place,,,, some chours, and octave divider and perhaps a few others,,, and a tuner.

All these things of course are available in the floor pedal form factor for cheap, but I am having a hell of a time finding any of these effects in a rackmount form factor.

I just purchased my first rack and am wanting to fill it with more than just my amp,,,,, the few rackmount muti effects I have found seem to be way way more expensive than their floor pedal counterparts.

So where do I find (who sells) some simple rackmount bass effects,,, and ones that dont cost way more than floor pedals ??? (yes, I have checked GC, Sweetwater, Sam Ash and all the usual suspects and have come up with very little)

Sorry for the dumb questions but I am new to the rack world.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers
Davyo
 
#2
There's really not much out there to find, in terms of "bass specific" racks. Line6 made one, and I think ART made one back in the early 90's, and SWR had their "Mo" unit for a short while, and there's the old ADA MB1. Seems like I may be forgetting one or two, but... Not many.

Best bet is to get a non-bass-labeled unit that happens to work well on bass. Lexicon and Eventide make some to consider.
 
#3
yeah... anything rackmount tends to be more expensive since they also tend to be more feature ladden. When I had a rackmount amp, I had a furman power conditioner (1u), dbx 160 compressor (1u) and a Korg tuner (1u) and then whatever rackmount head.

I once had this same quest as you and I didn't find anything that was rackmount and "cheap" unless you're gunna drop 200+ on something. A compressor and power conditioner is the only thing you'll find cheapish for rackmounts really.

Sansamp and Line6 might have something affordable... might not. Other wise trading here, ebay or your local Craigslist.

good luck man.
 
#7
Yeah, the trick is not to focus on "Bass" effects. Almost all studio effects have a very wide frequency response range suitable for bass. I use an Ashly Crossover, DBX dual band compressor, Behringer Harmonic Exciter/bass processor and I found each of these either on Craigslist or my local used music store for $60 or less each.
 
#8
I used to be heavily into rack processers. The Alesis MidiVerb4 was good, cheap, and worked well with bass. The Alesis Quadraverb 2 was far too complicated, but sounded great.

The downsides with these two units were their Midi switching, which had noticeable lag, and they had bad distortions.

The ADA MB-1 is more of a programmable preamp than an effects unit. But is pretty good at being a programmable preamp. The SansAmp programmable pre does the same thing, but better (in my opinion)

The ART Nightbass was a decent system, but screamed '80's.

Line 6's Bass POD Pro was very good, as were their single rackspace modelers. (filters, distortions, delays, and modulations). I'm not 100% sure what the latest and greatest is from Line 6 these days.

Behringer's Bass VAmp is basically the 'working-man's copy of the POD Pro. It does the job on the cheap.

Back in the day, Boss made a few 1/2 rackspace effects units that were very good. The SE-50, SE-70 and VF-1. They can be found on the used market.

That's really about it. You could get into TC-Electronics, Lexicon and Eventide, but none have bass (or even guitar)-specific units. Most are for studio purposes.
 
#9
Chandler had a rackmount version of their Tube Driver that you still find occasionally. It would serve your overdrive needs. Look for guitar effects that would work well with bass. I have used my Alesis Quadraverb with bass before, and my Lexicon MPX 100 too. They both sound good with bass. (They are reverb units.)
Boss had a great rack distortion unit. I think it was GL100? I just remember it sound great on my guitar. You can still find them on ebay and such. They are probably great on bass too.
 
#11
I'm using a TC Electronic G-Sharp: [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] I got mine $90 used from Guitar Center. I see them occasionally on Ebay as well. In general, they're really hard to find, but worth the search IMHO.

I'm pretty happy with it on bass, and I got one not having any idea if it would work out with the low frequencies. Not much use out of the delays (except for Pink Floyd covers :hiding: ), but I love the chorus, flangers, and phasers. And as with all TC gear with reverb, the reverb is stellar :bassist:

The additional 3 button switch for the TC Helicon voice stuff is the same for this unit. There's a slight delay switching between presets, but zero delay when bypassing. Usually, I'm just using a single reverb and/or chorus for a whole song and leaving it on. For phasers and flangers, I'm switching them on and off via the bypass switch rather than via presets. There's 99 preset spots, and you can customize them via MIDI with software for PC and MAC, so you can set exact millisecond timings and such.

On a side note, I also use a TC Electronic C300 compressor before it. I was hoping with them both having digital SPDIF I/O connections that I could keep my FX loop digital between the two units, but the input on the G-sharp is 44.1k and the output of the C300 is 48k, so I get a tick noise. Oh well.
(EDIT: After posting this, I double-checked the manuals and realized the C300 output and G-Sharp input are both 48k... hmm :confused:)

If you can't wait for one of these, the M300 and M350 from TC might be worth looking into... very similar to this unit. M350 is the most refined of them all.
 
#12
I got a Rocktron Piranha that's made for guitar. I stuck some NOS RCA tubes in it and it is cool for bass. At least I am digging it.

A rack wah is the type of thing that I've been thinking about doing a DIY. There's enough space to make it easy to fit everything.
 
#13
I used a lot of different 80's/90's Digitech DSP and GSP rack units for bass back in the day, and even gigged a GSP-21 Legend (complete with foot controller) up until a couple of years ago (traded it even for my '87 Ibanez RD707). Also, tons of other stuff like an A.R.T. SGE Mach II, assorted Peavey Addverbs, Alesis Midiverbs, and many different eqs, comps, preamps, amps, ect...

I liked using Digitech stuff the most for chorus, flange, and for having extremely flexible equalizers... A.R.T. stuff never impressed me too much, sounding and feeling kinda cheap and lo-fi compared to everything else I had used back then.

Oh, the 90's....

edited to add - As always, eBay is great for buying used gear that's easy to ship.
 
#17
I love the ART Nightbass It has been instrumental to my sound. The tube preamp gets you about 20db of gain( not that you need it ...but nice to have) A few things I really like about it
1. Stereo output- really nice to take full advantage of delays and chorus effects
2. you can control the output-send digital effects to 10's and analog to 15's or 18's or mix it any way you want.
3. set crossover point so you are not sending lows to the 10's knob on front panel so it is easy to adjust
4. digital and parametric EQ digital for the each patch and parametric on front side - you can tun the room with just a little tweek without editing the patch. this also works great of you have several basses.
5 control how much of signal is effected--front side adjustment to blend the sound of your sic amp with the processor.
6. 2 effects loops that can be activated via midi so you can add outboard pedals that get triggered when the patch is selected
7. X-15 pedal is amazing- MIDI for a quick channel switch also 2 programmable optical pedals for way or to adjust any feature.

I really like the sound I'm using it with 2 different rigs
small rig Mesa powerhouse 1200 , mesa M-2000, Art Night bass, furman power and korg dtr1

Large setup- Ampeg Pro4, Ampeg svp1600 Art Night BAss, BBE 882, Korg DTR 1 Furman power supply, Berihinger Vamp ( not used often) going to Ampeg Pr410HLF and AMpeg PR15h

I just found another Nightbass on Reverb for 80 bucks going to build one more setup with Mesa Titan v12.

Overkill??? of course!!! My shrink tells me I have a problem :)

Great unit to get of you want to make something sic.. I've uploaded the users manual to get you excited!
Go for the Special edition (SE) it has a lot more added
 

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