Your always on secret magic tone sauce pedal?

[PaulWarning]

Zoom  B1on with the  Sansamp Bass Driver sim and the AC Bs pre to take out the stuff below 30Hz

[Japhet]

On 29/10/2020 at 18:41, dudewheresmybass said:

Ehx bass soul food. 
dod bifet preamp or valeton fp10

 

these really make it pop in the mix. 

The Valeton FP10 is a cracking little pedal. I thought I was the only one to use it in a bass rig. I run mine with a TC Spectracomp and it chucks out a proper chunky sound.

[Baloney Balderdash]

As I wrote in my last reply in this topic I temporarily dropped the EHX Black Finger, tube driven optical compressor, that acted as sort of a tube preamp stage in my setup, more so than a compressor really, becuase the tubes in it went bad, but, while I still think it is an amazing pedal, I have now decided to drop it permanently, after getting lowly Art Tube MP Project Series (which I replaced the crappy cheap stock chinese tube in with an EHX 12AX7EH tube).

Now while this tube preamp actually is a step above the cheapest tube preamp Art offers, it still utilizes a straved tube plate circuit and is a bit under half the price of what the EHX Black Finger costed from new when it was still in production, however I really love what it does to my tone, and I've read up on it and actually starved tube plate circuits is supposed to result in the tubes coloring your tone more than tubes run at proper high voltage, rather than less as it is commonly believed, just in a much more nonlinear way, meaning that they will break up earlier and produce more uneven harmonics.

I've managed to find a blog with someone claiming they measured the actual plate voltage of this Art preamp, and they claim it is 70V, which, while being nowhere near anything like the 200 to 300V voltage that would be considered a proper tube plate voltage, would still be higher than most other straved plate tube circuits on the market.

Whatever that means in practical terms I have no idea of, but replacing the cheap stock Chinese tube with a proper quality Rusian made one made a huge difference tone wise, and the effect this preamp has on my tone, as the last device in my chain before the amp, is incredible.

It adds a really nice touch of rich warm tube flavor and slight compression that sort of rounds off the upper most sharp edge of my tone, eliminating any harshness, but while still retaining the bite and zing of it.

 

This is a full thorough walk through of all the always on pedals in my signal chain that technically could be considered "tone" pedals (used for my ampless setup for my 4 string 28,6" scale Ibanez Mikro Bass, tuned to G1 standard tuning, as in 3 half steps above regular E standard 4 string bass tuning, equipped with a DiMarzio Model P P pickup wired directly to the output jack socket, and run through an always on 1 octave up effect mixed with clean signal, giving an effect similar to an 8 string "octave" bass with pairs of respectively bass and octave strings) :

TC Electronic SpectraComp (always on, fully customizable, 3 band, compressor, with my own customized toneprint) ->> Boss LS-2 [A+B Mix <-> Bypass] (parallel effect loops mixer/switch) ->> ={ [Loop A Send] ->> [Loop A Return] ->||<- [Loop B Send] ->> Joyo Orange Juice (always on, relatively low gain, Orange amp style, overdrive, with the Tone control at noon, and the Voice control at about 2 O'clock (which would mean an about +4dB pre gain stage boost of a quite broad curve around an 800Hz center frequency), that is always mixed with the clean signal from parallel effects [Loop A] at an about 60% Orange Juice/40% clean signal ratio) ->> [Loop B Return] }=>> Zoom G1 Four (exclusively used as an always on EQ, utilizing five 1 band fully parametric equalizers to fine tune the tone, using following settings: Frq: 63Hz  Q: 3.6 +1.5dB /-/ Frq: 200Hz Q: 2.6 +1dB /-/ Frq: 250Hz Q: 2.1 +1.5dB /-/ Frq: 400Hz Q: 1.5 +2dB /-/ Frq: 1khz Q: 3.1 +2dB) ->> Behringer BEQ700 Bass Graphic Equalizer (always on, using the following settings: 50Hz ~+1dB /-/ 120Hz ~+1dB /-/ 400Hz ~+1dB /-/ 800Hz ~+2dB, and the 4.5kHz band cut about -1dB and 10kHz band cut about -15dB) ->> Art Tube MP Project Series (tube preamp)

Edited November 28, 2020 by Baloney Balderdash

[Misdee]

Diamond  Bass Compressor. 

By far the best compressor I have ever used, and the most useful( although I have yet to try the Cali76 which is also meant to be superb) . Not only does this pedal give me very pleasing compression/limiting, it is also a very handy tone shaping tool. Makes my basses sound like the ones on the recordings that inspired me and which  I am still  trying to emulate in one way or another all these years later. 

BDDI is great too, but more of a recording tool for me. I always think  , in terms of  using the BDDI in a live situation, why not just buy an amp you like the sound of in the first place?

Edited November 22, 2020 by Misdee

[Stub Mandrel]

A compressor seems to be a very frequent answer to the question.

Can I throw a cat among the Spectracomp pigeons and say my TC Electronic Forcefield compressor?

It's about half the price of a Spectracomp and meant for guitar. It seems to really bring out a richness of tone as well as evening things out, and doesn't reduce the bottom end (as far as I can tell).

When I tried it out using in the shop it was like light and day through a fairly small amp, less marked through a big amp but with everything more or less at 12 o'clock it just seems to bring out detail in the sound without making it harsh or bright.