Worship Bass Pedalboards

[jacoby75]

I sometimes wish I had a cool board, but I'm barely in the FOH mix anyway so...

Lol! That is so true. And that's why I've said it before and I'll say it again: Most of this we do for our OWN enjoyment. And maybe for the glory of God, but even THAT'S a stretch. I doubt He really cares whether you're using a Digitech Bad Monkey or a Darkglass Alpha Omega. I wonder if there will be pedalboards in heaven. That's a conversation for another thread.

 

[SteveC]

I guess this shot is a little more than just my pedalboard - but it's my typical little command center for the weekend (complete with communion on a paper plate).

View attachment 3336915

Even got to use my octave pedal in worship for once. (Psalm 46)

That's a lot of stuff.

 

[Eadger]

That looks fantastic. Do you run direct, or have an amp off-screen? I notice you don't have a speaker or amp sim, unless I'm missing something. I ask because I'm considering ditching mine.

Thanks! I'm always running direct (using the Neve DI sitting behind my pedalboard). I don't have an amp/speaker sim per se, but the left side of my board is there to accomplish that. The Linden, Grizzly, and obviously the Thumpinator are always on and I think of them as my amp and cab. The Linden is basically the EQ section of the B-15, then the Grizzly I have set to add some warmth and start to break up when I really dig in. Last in the signal path on the Grizzly before the master volume is the high-cut knob, which is really like a variable low-pass filter....so that going into my high-pass filter (Thumpinator) is basically my speaker emulation at the very end of my chain.

That high-cut knob on the Grizzly really works well and is especially noticeable when you've got some dirt in front of it. I can't run any kind of overdrive/distortion/fuzz - even my octave - without the Grizzly placed after....it makes all the difference.

 

[jacoby75]

Thanks! I'm always running direct (using the Neve DI sitting behind my pedalboard). I don't have an amp/speaker sim per se, but the left side of my board is there to accomplish that. The Linden, Grizzly, and obviously the Thumpinator are always on and I think of them as my amp and cab. The Linden is basically the EQ section of the B-15, then the Grizzly I have set to add some warmth and start to break up when I really dig in. Last in the signal path on the Grizzly before the master volume is the high-cut knob, which is really like a variable low-pass filter....so that going into my high-pass filter (Thumpinator) is basically my speaker emulation at the very end of my chain.

That high-cut knob on the Grizzly really works well and is especially noticeable when you've got some dirt in front of it. I can't run any kind of overdrive/distortion/fuzz - even my octave - without the Grizzly placed after....it makes all the difference.

Makes sense, thanks. I'm starting to realize that I don't need my speaker sim after my One Control Sonic Silver Peg, because its tone control is actually a variable low pass filter. Despite the DSM OCSD being a fantastic beast, it has become largely redundant in my setup, I think.

That Neve DI is a sweet addition. I think I need to ditch the OCSD and invest in a good DI, and I'll be golden.

 

[BlueShox]

I've been coveting the OCSD for a while, but every time I play with my Spectradrive it sounds so great and punchy and (somehow) tubey that I have a hard time wanting to come off of it. It sounds great to my ears; I still wonder if the OCSD would be what takes it from great to perfection.

 

[Johno Dunn]

I've been coveting the OCSD for a while, but every time I play with my Spectradrive it sounds so great and punchy and (somehow) tubey that I have a hard time wanting to come off of it. It sounds great to my ears; I still wonder if the OCSD would be what takes it from great to perfection.

View attachment 3337406

Are you using a TonePrint for your Comp, or the default on the SpectraDrive?

 

[jacoby75]

I've been coveting the OCSD for a while, but every time I play with my Spectradrive it sounds so great and punchy and (somehow) tubey that I have a hard time wanting to come off of it. It sounds great to my ears; I still wonder if the OCSD would be what takes it from great to perfection.

View attachment 3337406

Well, to a certain extent, I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you're happy with your sound leave it alone. The OCSD for me made the biggest difference when using overdrive pedals and trying to run direct. It also has a pretty nice effect on a clean bass. Making it sound sweeter and more amp-like. I bypass it when using an amp. I'm not sure I can part with the OCSD yet, though. There's something about that "resonance" knob of the OCSD that really makes it sound alive and three-dimensional, even if everything else is set largely flat.

 

[BlueShox]

Are you using a TonePrint for your Comp, or the default on the SpectraDrive?

I like the butter knife tone print for compression . I'm not a big fan of the drives

 

[SteveC]

View attachment 3337406
I like your "cheat sheet" and how it's organized.

 

[Johno Dunn]

I like the butter knife tone print for compression . I'm not a big fan of the drives

I feel the same way on both accounts. Butter knife for me, and I use the Clean Boost TonePrint, because the Drives are pretty weak. If you push the gain up on the Clean Boost, it breaks up pretty nicely when you dig in. I'm leaning towards having it an always on, and setting my gain structure accordingly.

 

[jmbjandfam]

I feel the same way on both accounts. Butter knife for me, and I use the Clean Boost TonePrint, because the Drives are pretty weak. If you push the gain up on the Clean Boost, it breaks up pretty nicely when you dig in. I'm leaning towards having it an always on, and setting my gain structure accordingly.

I have been using the SpectraDrive since it came out and haven't felt any need for a cab sim. It's just fat and sweet in my IEMs. I have used both the default Spectracomp and the Butter Knife but I'm currently using Nathan East's compression TonePrint.

I also agree about not liking any of the Drives but I use the Clean Boost TonePrint in the Drive section which is akin to the Spark Booster pedal as an always on addition.

 

[Johno Dunn]

I have been using the SpectraDrive since it came out and haven't felt any need for a cab sim. It's just fat and sweet in my IEMs. I have used both the default Spectracomp and the Butter Knife but I'm currently using Nathan East's compression TonePrint.

I also agree about not liking any of the Drives but I use the Clean Boost TonePrint in the Drive section which is akin to the Spark Booster pedal as an always on addition.

I run an FRFR set up (Yamaha DSR112) in both my Secular and Non Secular band settings, so I do run a HPF and a LPF at the end of my board, but I find that cab sims just kind of muddy up my tone. I'm really liking the SpectraDrive!

 

[bassicsax]

Played upright this week for an acoustic set... ran through the board anyways for compression, eq, and preamp on the stomp...

 

[TrevorR]

I'm glad my tip on the eden pedals worked out all those months ago!
What is the EHX Soul Food like? I hear good things about it, do you use it for worship?

Cheers,
SoundSupport

Yes, tracked down the Peterson power supply which has two variable channels so can power 15v pedals (why oh why oh why...). The CaliforniWah is great and squelchy now that I've got it dialled in. I would have kept the i90 chorus (it sounded lovely and shimmery!) but it had a fault which meant it went burble burble in the background the whole time - so back it went. Decided to replace it with another chorus and plumped for the EHX Bass Clone, which is fabulous! Also, I managed to sell my TRex Fuel Tank for a good price about a week after the Peterson arrives - so result!

I've not deliberately planned to but EHX pedals and have tried a whole range each time but the EHX seemed to be the one that sounded best to my ears each time. I guess that their designers and I are just on the same wavelength sonically!

Again the Bass Soul Food was a deliberate choice. I'm not a fan of distortion on bass and wanted a light, ampy OD which would add a bit of mild grit when needed but no more. So my key criteria were low gain structure, mild breakup, blend control to allow clean signal through with the OD, tonal control... I auditioned a load online as best I could to narrow down the potential options then set out to try them out. My front runners were the Mad Professor/Bearfoot Blueberry and the EHX BSF from online demos but the Blueberry is hard to get over here so I tried out the BSF against a range of other bass ODs in the shops.

I set my Sansamp with low gain for a good clean amp type sound and use the BSF for the mild OD. Reading a load of reviews lots of people were down on it because it's too low gain and you couldn't push it into an hard OD/distortion - but for me that's actually a bonus. Even with all controls up full and a hot output from by Wals, the OD is still relatively tame compared to any other pedal I tried and not really pushed into what you'd call a real distortion or fuzz. I set the gain around 12 or 1 o'clock which gives me a pretty even break up which has a bit more hair when I dig in. Perfect for me.

I use all my pedals in worship. My only always on pedal is the Sansamp as it's really acting as an amp and speaker cab for FOH. I'll use a touch of OD on the rockier songs... This is amazing grace, Glorious, Let God arise, Shout for joy - either pick of finger-style. Just for more bite to the tone. I vary tone from the bass a lot so some tones just don't call for OD at all. Particularly for the softer or mid paced songs. On a song like Won't Stop Now I'll probably play with pick but NOT And OD. But that's just my personal sound preference. I know that some would say that it's obligatory to nail the sound on that track. However, we're not trying to clone the sound of a particular recording, but rather just to make the instruments sound good to our ears in the context of the song as our band performs it. As it is, our other bass player doesn't use any effects in worship despite having a pedalboard the size of NASA Mission Control in his non-church band.

The other thing is use it for is in conjunction with the envelope filter for more synth-bass flavoured tones. Does it sound like Taurus Pedals or an Oberheim? No, but it works really well in the context of songs like Let Praise Awaken, Let It Be Known or Alive to add a synthy flavour to the bass tone. I've also been using it for tunes like Every Praise (which we do in a more 80s soul/funk/pop style than gospel) and it works really well with the 8th note bassline.

However, I've also been seeing videos and reviews of the Mono Bass Synth pedal which looks and sounds really, really great on the demos. I must confess I'm really quite tempted. Oh look... another EHX pedal! But not because of the brand, because it just seems like a really coooooool pedal!

 

[soundsupport1]

Yes, tracked down the Peterson power supply which has two variable channels so can power 15v pedals (why oh why oh why...). The CaliforniWah is great and squelchy now that I've got it dialled in. I would have kept the i90 chorus (it sounded lovely and shimmery!) but it had a fault which meant it went burble burble in the background the whole time - so back it went. Decided to replace it with another chorus and plumped for the EHX Bass Clone, which is fabulous! Also, I managed to sell my TRex Fuel Tank for a good price about a week after the Peterson arrives - so result!

I've not deliberately planned to but EHX pedals and have tried a whole range each time but the EHX seemed to be the one that sounded best to my ears each time. I guess that their designers and I are just on the same wavelength sonically!

Again the Bass Soul Food was a deliberate choice. I'm not a fan of distortion on bass and wanted a light, ampy OD which would add a bit of mild grit when needed but no more. So my key criteria were low gain structure, mild breakup, blend control to allow clean signal through with the OD, tonal control... I auditioned a load online as best I could to narrow down the potential options then set out to try them out. My front runners were the Mad Professor/Bearfoot Blueberry and the EHX BSF from online demos but the Blueberry is hard to get over here so I tried out the BSF against a range of other bass ODs in the shops.

I set my Sansamp with low gain for a good clean amp type sound and use the BSF for the mild OD. Reading a load of reviews lots of people were down on it because it's too low gain and you couldn't push it into an hard OD/distortion - but for me that's actually a bonus. Even with all controls up full and a hot output from by Wals, the OD is still relatively tame compared to any other pedal I tried and not really pushed into what you'd call a real distortion or fuzz. I set the gain around 12 or 1 o'clock which gives me a pretty even break up which has a bit more hair when I dig in. Perfect for me.

I use all my pedals in worship. My only always on pedal is the Sansamp as it's really acting as an amp and speaker cab for FOH. I'll use a touch of OD on the rockier songs... This is amazing grace, Glorious, Let God arise, Shout for joy - either pick of finger-style. Just for more bite to the tone. I vary tone from the bass a lot so some tones just don't call for OD at all. Particularly for the softer or mid paced songs. On a song like Won't Stop Now I'll probably play with pick but NOT And OD. But that's just my personal sound preference. I know that some would say that it's obligatory to nail the sound on that track. However, we're not trying to clone the sound of a particular recording, but rather just to make the instruments sound good to our ears in the context of the song as our band performs it. As it is, our other bass player doesn't use any effects in worship despite having a pedalboard the size of NASA Mission Control in his non-church band.

The other thing is use it for is in conjunction with the envelope filter for more synth-bass flavoured tones. Does it sound like Taurus Pedals or an Oberheim? No, but it works really well in the context of songs like Let Praise Awaken, Let It Be Known or Alive to add a synthy flavour to the bass tone. I've also been using it for tunes like Every Praise (which we do in a more 80s soul/funk/pop style than gospel) and it works really well with the 8th note bassline.

However, I've also been seeing videos and reviews of the Mono Bass Synth pedal which looks and sounds really, really great on the demos. I must confess I'm really quite tempted. Oh look... another EHX pedal! But not because of the brand, because it just seems like a really coooooool pedal!
View attachment 3338136 View attachment 3338137

Oh wow, thanks for the essay!
I suspect you could copy and paste that reply into the main P&W club thread and get a great response! Good review.

I reckon I'm in the same position as you regarding OD - I'd be looking for a low-gain, more transparent crunch style pedal as well.

I'll post pics tomorrow, but I'm constructing a two-in-one pedal board: the top row is direct, the bottom row is the effects loop.
The top row is a Radial Bigshot I/O, which is an A/B switch with two inputs for my two basses, one output, and a tuner out. That feeds into an Eden Glowplug tube warmer, which is set very low just to stop the signal being too sterile. That then goes into an Eden WTDI, which has EQ set flat, just a bit of compression added. That signal then goes into the input on the amp.

The bottom row goes through the effects loop, and is still under construction. For now, I have a Boss CEB-3 Chorus, which I've had since I was 13 and still works, and a T-Rex Quint octave pedal, which arrived a week ago and is immense. Thomann has a 50% deal on T-rex pedals at the minute, if you're in Europe.
I have a couple of spaces left to fill: I've got my eye on the TC Electronics Helix phaser, and was thinking that an OD would complete the 'necessary' effects nicely.

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
SoundSupport

 

[TrevorR]

Oh wow, thanks for the essay!

Lol!

I'll post pics tomorrow, but I'm constructing a two-in-one pedal board: the top row is direct, the bottom row is the effects loop.

Nice, will look forward to seeing it. Mine's also a 2 Channel/effects loop layout. The Little Lehle does the loop switching. Straight is just Bass > PolyTune > Little Lehle > Sansamp (as with your two Eden pedals just giving some liveness/ampness to the tone). The loop is LL > BSF > CaliforniWah > Pulsar Tremolo > Bass Clone > LL.

I used to have an old Boss chorus too - a CE-2B which I'd had since about 1990-95ish. Lovely, lovely sounding pedal but a lot more subdued than the i90 or the Bass Clone in some ways - both of which seemed more shimmery to my ears and capable of much deeper Seattle grunge type chorus wobbles. That said, I run it much as I ran my Boss - cheesy 80s pop chorus to thicken up slower ballad type tunes.

 

[extreme]

Well, I had a pretty stable board for a couple years (yep...right about 2 years ago I posted it):

Worship Bass Pedalboards

A couple things have changed for me...(1) I finally just recently got a Broughton P15. Read my post in the link above and you'll see my love for the B15-N and my goal of trying to replicate that in some way. Also, a lot of the modern worship songs that I am playing actually have a lot of overdrive/distortion on the bass parts and I wanted to try to figure that out a bit.

So, I went back to my "big" board Pedaltrain Junior a while back so I had room to experiment and now as of last Sunday I've condensed back down onto my Nano+ board. I'm running from this board into the Broughton P15 and then DI'd to FOH from the P15. I'm pretty sure this board is going to stay like this for quite a while, but I'll definitely be experimenting and fine tuning my settings for a while yet. Well, and...do I need/want a dual channel Broadcast? Same footprint, but two gain stages available...maybe not quite the same low gain settings available though? So, there's that.

Okay, here are the pics!

Signal chain is: Korg Pitchblack -> Doc Lloyd Photon Death Ray (optical compressor w/blend) -> johnk XO crossover distortion (4-band EQ, clean lows, drive circuit on highs that can be toggled on/off) -> Hudson Broadcast (transformer saturation and germanium dirt circuit) -> Electronix Submarine (little magic box!) -> Broughton P15 (tube preamp section of B15-N with DI out to FOH)

I am also using this same board for all my other live gigs where I am now running the P15 into a small 1.5 lb 500 watt power amp. So, the comp/EQ/dirt on this little board works well for essentially replacing a standard amp head and being able to use the P15 to get the tone I want at gig volumes.

 

[soundsupport1]

Lol!


Nice, will look forward to seeing it. Mine's also a 2 Channel/effects loop layout. The Little Lehle does the loop switching. Straight is just Bass > PolyTune > Little Lehle > Sansamp (as with your two Eden pedals just giving some liveness/ampness to the tone). The loop is LL > BSF > CaliforniWah > Pulsar Tremolo > Bass Clone > LL.

Well, you asked for it:

Ignore the cable madness: this board is still a work in progress, neatness will follow at some point!
The Quint really is an immense octaver BTW: it actually seems to add a bit of top-end crispiness to the signal, which I really like. Very musical pedal.
Here's the (current) full rig:

A Lakland 55-02 Fretless will be added in March.

Current plan is to tape the Fame power supply to the underside of the elevated section I've built, because the LEDs on that thing cause retinal damage. Then I'll add a second plywood section at ground level, and the effects loop will be velcroed to that. Then I can start getting things permanently wired and tided up. Might build a case for all of it too.
Other pedals to be added are a Polytune, but the little £10 Korg is doing fine for now. Also on the agenda are an EHX Bass Soul Food overdrive (or maybe, if I'm feeling rich, a Rodenberg 808b), and a TC Electronics Helix Phaser.
Then I'll feel complete, and can stop this endless searching...

Cheers,
SoundSupport

 

[glassmoon]

Well, I couldn't resist any longer and I got a second hand MXR Bass Octave Deluxe (for the 2nd time.... sigh).
I think I'm done now....

 

[jacoby75]

I think I'm done now....

Famous last words.