Effects for beginners

[Rick05]

Hi Everyone,

I am new to the world of effects and just wondered if anyone has advice on using them.

I have been playing for about 8 years and now am in a pretty serious band where the guitarists have just bought lots of nice gadgets and wonderful toys (not that thats affecting my choice in any way lol). The band is kind of alternative rock like A Perfect Circle/Incubus kind of thing.

The only thing I use regularly is an ashdown commpressor which I have on most of the time as it sounds awesome, but I just wondered what other things are avaliable and what other people like to use live and what can be used in everyday settings to beef up sound and generally make songs more interesting?

Looking forward to hearing what people recommend.

Thanks,

Rick

[Nyl]

its all down to you, and who you like the sound of

i recently got a Bass Big Muff and i can't imagine life without it

[xgsjx]

Get a multi FX pedal to start with. This way you'll get to know what fx you're gonna use & what you ain't & not end up buying a pretty brick.

Depending on how much you want to spend, have a look at Zoom, Line 6 & Roland. THere's some in the For Sale section.

[matski]

[quote name='xgsjx' post='1184387' date='Apr 1 2011, 09:43 AM']Get a multi FX pedal to start with. This way you'll get to know what fx you're gonna use & what you ain't & not end up buying a pretty brick.

Depending on how much you want to spend, have a look at Zoom, Line 6 & Roland. THere's some in the For Sale section.[/quote]

Good advice! For years I chopped and changed stompboxes, then I bought a multiFX unit and now my old pedals are neglected.

[Truckstop]

If I were you, i'd go onto youtube and look for demos of pedals. It's handy to find out exactly what each effect actually does!
Search for reverb, delay, overdrive, fuzz, synth and chorus (I'd say they're the main effects that people use) demos.
Electro Harmonix do nice boutique style effects for not too much money and they pop up on this forum for sometimes half price! Look on the EHX website for names of pedals you think sound cool and the youtube it. There's a demo for practically every effect they do!

Personally, I use an EHX Clone Theory for a bit of chorus colour and occasional vibrato mentalness, a reverb for quiet passages where I want to soften mutes and a master blaster for volume/bass boost for load passages.

Good luck! You'll never be satisfied with the pedals you have, it's like an illness!

Truckstop

Edited April 1, 2011 by Truckstop

[Rick05]

Thanks guys this is great advice,

With multi effects I do have a zoom (really old) but it has no true bypass, are there any cheap ones with true bypass so at loeast I can have a neutral sound if I dont like the effects?

[Nyl]

I don't know of any true by pass multi effects pedals, without breaking the bank.

an option may be a line selector

[Lozz196]

Chorus, or flanger are good effects which add a bit of interesting difference to the bass - prob chorus more than a flanger, in my opinion. The trouble I found years ago with distortion on bass, is that once you switch it off, it sounds really empty, so its then on all the time as part of your regular sound, and you end up looking for yet another pedal that can "add something interesting". A vicious circle indeed.

[Doddy]

[quote name='Rick05' post='1184496' date='Apr 1 2011, 11:44 AM']Thanks guys this is great advice,

With multi effects I do have a zoom (really old) but it has no true bypass, are there any cheap ones with true bypass so at loeast I can have a neutral sound if I dont like the effects?[/quote]

Don't worry too much about true bypass-there are arguments for and against it.
Something like the Boss ME50-B is a good starting point,although a lot of people like the Zoom.

[mep]

+1 for the Ashdown dual compressor. I use it all the time for gigs and it sound the nuts.

I also use a Boss OC2 Octaver for a few songs and a cheapo Behringer Chorus for a few songs too.

Plenty to choose from. You need to decide if you go the multi fx route of just get the pedals you want. Your style and set list will dictate somewhat.

[cheddatom]

[quote name='Rick05' post='1184496' date='Apr 1 2011, 11:44 AM']Thanks guys this is great advice,

With multi effects I do have a zoom (really old) but it has no true bypass, are there any cheap ones with true bypass so at loeast I can have a neutral sound if I dont like the effects?[/quote]

I used to play my bass through a zoom guitar multi effects thing. It was crap, and noisey, no true bypass etc, but it taught me what each effect did and how I could control them. I slowly bought up individual pedals to create the same effects, but better sounds.

[xgsjx]

Some of my pedals (Such as the Moog MF-101) are not true bypass & I prefer the sound I get when the bass is going thru them as opposed to the bass' unaffected tone.

I won't suggest any individual effects to buy without knowing what sound & type of music you're playing. I started with a Zoom BFX 708 to find out what fx I was gonna use & what I wasn't as what sounds good at home doesn't always fit in a band situation (tho it's hard to go wrong with a chorus, flanger or phaser).

If you're after a synthy sound, then Have a look in the Dnb/Dubstep topic for loads of samples & advice. That's where my sound is heading.

[Rick05]

thanks,

if you want an idea of our sound, this is my band

[url="http://findafiend.co.uk/"]http://findafiend.co.uk/[/url]

I dont play on the album but I play on our new single and the videos that are up. If anyone has any suggestions for the effects pedals that have worked in this kind of setting it would be great to hear other peoples experiences.

Cheers,

Rick

[Ian Savage]

+1 on the idea of a half-decent multi to begin with, I reckon if you were to spend about a ton on a used Boss (ME50B or maybe GT6B if you're lucky) or Line 6 Bass Pod (they do floor versions now, I think) you'd have a good-sounding unit to get an idea of which effects you like/need which you could then sell at a minimal loss if you decided you wanted individual pedals, or keep and use for the effects you only use once or twice in a set and augment with 'better' stompboxes for the effects you need more often or which the multi doesn't cut it for.

Line selector or A/B box is an option if you find the lack of true bypass to be an issue, but I suspect you won't notice tbh.

If you do go for single stompboxes, there's no hard-and-fast rules for what order to put them in but as a rule of thumb you'd go gain-based effects first (distortion, compression) then modulation effects (chorus, flanger etc) then time-based effects (reverb, delay etc) with spectrum alteration (EQ, wah) wherever it sounds best; strictly speaking they're gain-based, but it depends very much on the rest of your pedalboard and the overall effect you're trying to achieve where they go.

[Rick05]

Thanks so much for that info.

Im gonna have a look at the Boss gt 6b as it seems to have more than the me50b and also has bypass.

Is that the best option do you think at this stage?

[dannybuoy]

Multi-FX are good for some effects but not so great for overdrive/distortion/fuzz in my experience, which are the bread and butter of my effects.

You'll see that plenty of gigging bassists in your genre will use a Sansamp Bass Driver DI to add a bit of grit to their sound and to send an amp-like sound to the PA. Kind of an industry standard gigging and recording tool, definitely worth thinking about trying one out, as well as their VT Bass pedal.

Any idea what kind of effects you would find a use for? I use a low gain overdrive to boost when the guitars get louder and a Bass Big Muff to add to that when things get really heavy. Then a chorus or phaser is useful for slow passages, and you can also work in filters and octavers if used subtly in the right place.