Choosing overdrive and fuzz pedals

[Grahambythesea]

Alternatively abandon all pedals and just go for a great BASS sound! After all the bass is part of the rhythm section and distorting or artificially extending the sustain is not complementary to rhythm. Leave the effects to the show offs playing 6. The caveat to this is compression which is probably built in to your amp and if playing fretless, a little ( very little) chorus might enhance the sound, or so Pino says.

[Doddy]

4 minutes ago, Grahambythesea said:

Alternatively abandon all pedals and just go for a great BASS sound! After all the bass is part of the rhythm section and distorting or artificially extending the sustain is not complementary to rhythm. Leave the effects to the show offs playing 6. The caveat to this is compression which is probably built in to your amp and if playing fretless, a little ( very little) chorus might enhance the sound, or so Pino says.

Because having a great sound and using effects are mutually exclusive, right?🤦‍♂️

[bassbloke]

1 hour ago, SteveXFR said:

 

A wall of sound is exactly what we're going for. Where we do leave space, it's generally long, sustained notes with lots of distortion. 

MXR.

[MacDaddy]

There are details on BC somewhere, for a company who rent pedals, so you can try a whole bunch before you buy.

[MacDaddy]

14 minutes ago, Grahambythesea said:

Alternatively abandon all pedals and just go for a great BASS sound! After all the bass is part of the rhythm section and distorting or artificially extending the sustain is not complementary to rhythm. Leave the effects to the show offs playing 6. The caveat to this is compression which is probably built in to your amp and if playing fretless, a little ( very little) chorus might enhance the sound, or so Pino says.

 

Want to tell that to Bootsy Collins or Chris Wolsteholme?

[SteveXFR]

36 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

So why do you want to use the Stingray when you already have a great sound with the Thunderbird?

 

Because I prefer playing Stingray and when I turn off the dirt, the Stingray cuts through much better. Different sounds for different songs.

[BigRedX]

14 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

Because I prefer playing Stingray and when I turn off the dirt, the Stingray cuts through much better. Different sounds for different songs.

 

Fair enough.

 

However I think in this case then the great sound with the Thunderbird is a bit of a red herring, and you should forget about it and concentrate on getting the sounds you want out of the Stingray. What you are going to need is an overdrive/fuzz pedal specifically designed to work with an active bass, as the active electronics present a different impedance to the input of the pedals compared with a passive one and this is very noticeable when trying to get dirty overdriven sounds. 

 

Other than that, I'm afraid I can't help you as I ditched pedals over 30 years ago in favour of good quality multiple-effects units that don't suffer from these problems.

[LeftyJ]

My tactic has always been "buy to try". I buy most of my musical gear used, and if I don't like it I sell it with zero loss. I've never been much of an FX guy, and most pedals I've owned throughout the years were just to tinker with at home. Two years ago I finally put together a small pedalboard with a few basic commodities on a Pedaltrain Nano. Before that I've owned several envelope filters, chorus pedals, delays and a few drive pedals. I did of course bring them along to rehearsals to try them with my bands, because what sounds good at home could sound like rubbish in a full mix (or not punch through at all). 

 

I have owned:

- Fulltone Bassdrive (an earlier model without the mosfet switch). Still owned and much loved, but I mostly use it for guitar rather than bass;

- Rodenberg GAS-828. Brilliant for guitar, and has usable settings for bass as well. Still owned, and definitely not going anywhere;

- Ashdown James Lomenzo Hyperdrive (long gone, not for me);

- EBS Metaldrive (terrible. The drive knob acts like an on/off-switch on this one, there's zero subtlety possible);

- Darkglass B7K, permanently on my board and my go-to drive pedal for my metalband. 

[paul_5]

6 hours ago, SteveXFR said:

 

Because I prefer playing Stingray and when I turn off the dirt, the Stingray cuts through much better. Different sounds for different songs.

mmm, I’ve found that I prefer to use dirt boxes with passive basses; stingrays just don’t do dirty to my ears.

 

obviously YMMV, and Timmy C (amongst many others) seem to be ok with the sound.

[SteveXFR]

Tim Commerford got some great dirty sounds with a Stingray, mostly an Ampeg with the gain cranked.

Rex Brown used a Stingray with Kill Devil Hill and got great dirty sounds. Trent Reznor used Stingrays on the first couple NIN records with plenty of dirt and I've seen him use one live with fuzz.

[Wilson_51_]

Stoner/doom and fuzz, my favourite! It’s always a difficult topic of which fuzz should to pick. Biggest problem is what works for one person doesn’t for someone else. All basses, amps and people sound different when combined.

 

id be inclined to find a “strain” of pedal you like and then fall down the rabbit hole of who makes what. Such as if you like a big muff tone, there thousands of muff based pedals with different perks. (Grand tarkin, musket etc)
 

i am a fan of blending in a bit of clean but it’s not always necessary.

 

I’m quite fond of the mountainking megalith at the moment with a blend.
I’d also probably be looking at damnation audio MBD-2. 
 

from experience fuzzes and actives sometimes don’t work too well however Zvex mastotron works quite well with rolling off the volume before it get into the fuzz section.
 

 When used to use a stingray I ran a tube screamer into a Russian big muff and found the combo of the two worked very well. IIRC on the first RATM album Tim used a guvnor mk1 to get his tone.
 

 

Edited February 3, 2022 by Wilson_51_

[SteveXFR]

What does the Russian bit add to the big muff? Is a more communist fuzz a good thing?

[paul_5]

Changes in the tone stack - it lets more bass through, might be slightly less gain than the NYC one. 
 

here’s a link to a site that lists all of the different types, and their main differences. 
 

i find this sort of stuff interesting, for some it’s worryingly obsessive- you pays your money etc…

 

http://www.kitrae.net/music/big_muff_history.html

[WalMan]

Depends what level of distortion you are after, but I love the SkarBassOne from Trondheim Audio that Dood demoed for BGM last October (my one from the original Kickstarter 😁) Two levels switchable, so you can set a mild grit and then kick in a bit/lot more. It's a constant for my sound gigging and recording now.

 

Then again for utter filth the fuzz pedal my youngest built me for my birthday last year is pretty mental 🤣

[Nicko]

I'm fortunate to have a shop locally that stocks an almost endless range of pedals and they're happy for you to sit there for a couple of hours comparing them.  I've taken my bass there and A/B tested pedals until I find the one I like best.  Then I take them to rehearsal only to find that actually they didn't fit in the band at all.

[Vin Venal]

It's indulgent I know, but at the moment I've got two darkglass pedals - the vintage microtubes, and the alpha omega, and between the two, I can get some truly monstrous sounds.

[Happy Jack]

 

[Happy Jack]

There you go ... sorted.

 

No need to thank me. 

 

😉