a must pedal for bass??

[Santa]

for me, i think a good od is nice sometimes.

maybe a chorus?

definitely an eq though

 

[Indigo_blues]

bass don't need effects 99.9% of the time.

 

[CrispyEgg]

i'd say, go with an EQ on a DI box. effects that deal distortion are not needed. modulation effects are also rarely useful. a lil compression would help in recording.

 

[ahkiatt]

read up on john myung. dream theater's bassist. he doesn't buy any specific distortion. he uses his amp's onboard stuff...

but then again. his amp costs a bomb :lol:

 

[CrispyEgg]

can you play like john myung, or play his stuff?

if yes, can you afford his racks? his distortion comes from his racks, where'd u get the info that i came from amp...

 

[rylche]

Definitely an EQ or a DI. EQ - for the inevitable boosting/cuttting of certain frequencies that you will learn to appreciate to have a presence in the mix. DI - too many purposes to list, your Swiss Army Knife in a shell.

Some other useful effects , like the above posters have pointed out, would be Chorus. It might give that extra edge you have been looking for all this while for those climatic bridges,outros etc etc.

 

[platypus]

But sometimes bassist like cliff burton use distortion and sometimes a slight wah effect to "build up" the climax of the song, sort of adds a little "push" to the guitar overdriven sound, and normal clean tone in the other parts of the song(intro,verse etc).

and song examples? i'm interested in hearing what it sounds like..

cliff uses it here and there, like the riff in master of puppets before james screams "master, master wheres the dreams..." after the soft solo. or the "chorus" riff, the part before they break into the outro or the outro itself in fade to black .

but it's kind of hard to tell in some songs because cliffs bass cant be heard so well in the mix.

 

[exin]

bass don't need effects 99.9% of the time.

agreed ... in fact .. it's 99.999999999% of the time .. basically .. the 0.0000000001% is just to spice things up ..

i think the necessary ones are stuff like what they said .. DI box ... it's not really a effect pedal .. .. and maybe a compressor .. that's all .. i'd always go flat on my bass with a slight bass emphasis ... even on the amp itself ... saves alot of trying to figure out which frequencies are overdone ...

the rest of my tone is shaped by my playing technique and blend .. or pickup blend lah .. more towards the neck or more towards the bridge for different tones .. you know what i mean ..

 

[gsonique]

compressor
parametric eq
fuzz
auto filter
maybe wah if yer wanna get fancy !!

 

[ahkiatt]

oops my bad my bad. john myung does go through stuff... it's a different rock bassist that goes clean...

 

[gsonique]

how do you know its clean when lots of bass amp got built it effects..at least a comp or para eq !!

 

[reyrey]

how do you know its clean when lots of bass amp got built it effects..at least a comp or para eq !!

eq is not considered as one la,effect that we're talkin is something that alter your sound drastically,like change your chicken rice to hokkien mee,totally diff....like fuzz bla bla bla
almost all built in things are not good,imo,you wanna get compressor,buy compressor pedal or rack compressor,i dont really like the idea of combining amp n effect in 1 product...
anyway,compressor [like its name] only compress the sound,make it more dense,still considered as clean sound

 

[gsonique]

oh i see ....go check out the Brass Master Clone at www.moosapotamus.net

 

[litford]

eq is not considered as one la,effect that we're talkin is something that alter your sound drastically

i think eq can change your sound drastically. just take off all the mids, or bass or treble, im pretty sure your sound changes drastically enough. plus with an effect pedal, you can effectively switch between different tones. so for me, i'd still definitely consider it an effect pedal, unless you're talking about putting it thru your active preamp, your amplifier preamp or rackmount.

hmmm.. after playing with a few effects, i don't think there's any one pedal that i die die need to have whilst playing if not cannot play. but a good appreciation of effects can definitely enhance the way a band sounds. for instance chris wostenholme from muse uses effects quite liberally, and it fits with the 3 piece attack that they have.

justin chancellor seems to be using a lot of effects lately on 10,000 Days, overdrives, chorus, delay.. quite a bit. Colin Greenwood from radiohead has been using stuff abit more to make his bass sound more synth like with the new radiohead stuff.. can you imagine Concave Scream's Three album without a chorus bass? i think effects are an important contribution to changing the band's sound, and it has to be carefully balanced out with what the guitarist can do as well. ie. sometimes the guitarist doesn't need to be the guy in charge of all the effects.

 

[ahkiatt]

how do you know its clean when lots of bass amp got built it effects..at least a comp or para eq !!

the dude quoted it during some interview.

 

[rylche]

+1 litford, EQ definitely can drastically alter your tone. It's almost a must-have for all gigging bassists as the sonic environment you work in changes everytime, so you gotta need the EQ to keep your tone consistent, and for those gigs to come streaming in.

 

[reyrey]

litford: what i meant by sound change is from clean then you on fuzz,totally change,i gave the example,its totally diff sound,for eq,usually people use it to push the sound
you cut down the mid in the eq pedal,the sound still clean what,wont change to distortion or fuzz right?

 

[Freeko]

could someone explain what a DI box is used for? i googled it but i still don't understand.

this may sound superficial but i don't see any knobs on it for adjustment or anything just an input and output.

 

[Colarndo]

Direct Insertion/Injection(some say) Box:
Converts an unbalanced(1/4") signal into a balanced one via XLR(3Pin)output.
Normal D.Is have Gound/Lift(eliminate Ground Noise), -10db pad, and are phantom powered(from console)

 

[CrispyEgg]

. . .ken dude, you suck at googling man. seriously. wat the heck did you search for?
and you've obviously seen too few DIs, i'm guessing 2 only so far (the two that the school has, that's all right).

yea like what colarndo said. it converts and unbalanced signal to a balanced one. unbalanced basically means it's one wave signal. balanced usually means two wave signals that are phased, i.e. direct opposites. one wave is then inverted at the end, e.g. at the mixing desk. any noise picked up will be canceled by the simple law of math that a wave of value +1 is canceled out by a wave of value -1 to a value of 0.

but u don't have to know all this. just know u need a DI in order to plug into a mixer.

and to add, Bass DIs usually have an equaliser, which is useful, and bassists bring one around even if they're not plugging into the house because of the EQ function.