Bass - Lead - Amp

[Linus27]

I used to be bass - lead - amp for about 35 years but now I only play fretless and in a band where I play quite a lead role, I am starting to discover pedals and I love it. I'm not going crazy and just have a small pedal board which contains a tuner, octave, chorus and reverb but I have just added a Zoom MS60 Stompbox. This seems to add some nice effects like tremolo which combined with chorus and reverb makes a lovely sound when playing harmonics.  

[PaulThePlug]

2 hours ago, MartinB said:

Not all effects are pedals
Not all pedals are effects
Not all effects make spaceship noises

I like spaceship noises... just a little levitating phaser...

Edited August 7, 2023 by PaulThePlug

[White Cloud]

4 hours ago, Supernaut said:

Does anyone run a simple set-up anymore?

 

I'm seeing bass players these days with crazy pedalboards in front of them. 
 

The only pedal I have is a Polytune. 
 

What happened to bass, lead, amp?

My gigging setup for many years as my TC electronic amp has a built in Chorus...

Edited August 7, 2023 by White Cloud

[2elliot]

Some people have told me I shouldn't even be using a bass...

[MichaelDean]

But the point of a bass amp is to amplify and shape your tone. As we all know, anything you add to your signal chain changes your tone. If your bass/amp/cab can't get the tone you want, isn't it the natural conclusion to change or add something until you get it? Not everyone only requires a "standard" bass tone to fit sonically with the band. Music would be very boring if everyone sounded the same all of the time.

 

Plus playing with effects can be really fun. Making a huge wall of noise with overdrive, fuzz, delay and reverb and then at the end of the song letting it ring out into a squealing, snarling mess is about the best fun I've had with my clothes on! I honestly suggest you try it! 😁

[neepheid]

I'm not going to tell anyone how to bass.

 

I use 2 pedals - a tuner and an overdrive - between my bass and the amp.  I hadn't ever considered what other people might think of that.  I'm probably the sort of player who can please neither camp, two is too many for the minimalists and two is pathetic for the pedalboard crowd.

 

I do me, you're very welcome to do you.  Or do one

[Leonard Smalls]

I did a gig a while ago where I split the signal from my bass, sent one lot to a Line 6 Helix and the other to my complicated pedalboard with 4 channels of fx arrayed round a mixer, then both board outputs went into a stereo rack DBX compressor and into 2 channels of a Crown power amp and 2 Markbass 4x10s.

Sounded like the bastard lovechild of Bootsy, Lemmy and Bernie Worrell!

Although once it had gone through the PA it was just an indistinct rumble, for so it is written in The Book Of Rock!

[TeresaFR]

I play in a distinctly 80s influenced style, so certain effects are essential. If you want to go all 1950s, then go ahead - I will continue on with my small pedalboard with chorus, flange, drive, delay and comp (not in that order).

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, BassAdder60 said:

I see ampless being the future for younger players assuming bands invest in a decent PA rig 

 

Only covers bands need their own PA.

 

Originals bands play venues with in-house PAs and engineers. Since the mid 90s the only venues I have played with an originals band that didn't have their own PA were ones that do not normally put on live music and for those we hired in a PA.

[Beedster]

5 hours ago, Supernaut said:

Does anyone run a simple set-up anymore?

 

I'm seeing bass players these days with crazy pedalboards in front of them. 
 

The only pedal I have is a Polytune. 
 

What happened to bass, lead, amp?

I use bass-lead-amp but it works for me in my band, it wouldn't work for me if I was in a different band, if I was in an RHCP tribute for example I'm sure I'd need (want) a load of processing to emulate Flea's parts, in an 80's act I might want to smother fretless in chorus, an originals band might require specific sounds to express the music. I don't think there's any right or wrong, virtuous or deceptive either way. It's not the tool, it's how you use it.  

[BigRedX]

3 minutes ago, Beedster said:

I use bass-lead-amp but it works for me in my band, it wouldn't work for me if I was in a different band, if I was in an RHCP tribute for example I'm sure I'd need (want) a load of processing to emulate Flea's parts, in an 80's act I might want to smother fretless in chorus, an originals band might require specific sounds to express the music. I don't think there's any right or wrong, virtuous or deceptive either way. It's not the tool, it's how you use it.  

 

Exactly.

 

I use a Helix and no amp. It's as much or as little processing as I need between the bass guitar and the PA amps/speakers. 

 

At one extreme it's just some EQ and maybe a bit of drive to allow the bass to be in the correct place in the mix. At the other it's making it sound like almost anything I want. And anything in between. Also I can go from one to the other at the press of a footswitch.

[Old Horse Murphy]

Tuner, compressor, overdrive, octaver and chorus for me. I don't use them all the time for every song but they're there if I want to use them and add some variety to my sound. 

[Waddo Soqable]

When I saw bass - lead - amp, It kind of made me think more the amp itself, as in a general purpose amp

.. I used to have an Orange 120 amp that was, I guess, effectively a guitar amp, this I used thru a random elderly 4x12 which was again, presumably, a guitar cab. This combination worked fine for me at the time for loads of 'normal' size gigs etc. 

A mate at the time, who was a bass player in other bands, similarly used a Marshall 100w guitar amp and 4x12 in the same fashion. 

Neither of us used fx of any kind btw. 

Jumping forward a decade or few, I've generally just used a bit of reverb / chorus as a default (from one pedal) I've never gone for massive pedal boards playing live. 

[BassAdder60]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

 

Only covers bands need their own PA.

 

Originals bands play venues with in-house PAs and engineers. Since the mid 90s the only venues I have played with an originals band that didn't have their own PA were ones that do not normally put on live music and for those we hired in a PA.

I don’t think it’s only covers bands that use their own PA

 

Depends on the venues and how low down the music train you are as many original acts do start in pubs and using their own PA 

 

Youre right if you are an established originals act then house or venue PA and sound engineer would be normal but that’s a totally different bag of chips ! 
 

 

[Rodders]

I ran bass - lead - amp for years and years, my board only consists of "functional" pedals as I see it, instrument selector (plug two basses in at once), tuner, HPF and compressor. I don't uses any effects at all. 

I don't use the tuner much its just a back up in case I forget or lose one of my clip ons, don't always use the instrument selector depending on the gig. HPF and compressor are always in use.

[Lfalex v1.1]

Bass > Lead > Amp  for me. 

 

Four things lie behind this;

 

Expense of FX, boards, power bricks, cables etc. etc.

 

Mess/ complexity.

 

I can never seem to quite get them to do what I want. 

 

I feel marginalised by manufacturers' insistence on using strange names for their devices;

I might actually find the new "Electromatics Spider-Squisher (+)" to be excellent.  But since I can't tell what on earth it actually does... How would I know?

 

 

 

[TeresaFR]

My pedalboard is tuner- comp.- chorus- flanger- delay- preamp and I rarely have all five of those effects on at once, usually only three (compression, a modulation and the preamp). I run an ampless set-up due to walking or taking public transport to gigs. I hope no one's affronted by the use of a tuner pedal, I wouldn't fancy tuning by ear, and I like it more than the other technological alternatives. 

I'm somewhat bewildered that a lot of the more traditional effects seem to be being considered new-fangled, like a Boss Flanger or EHX Big Muff being compared to an EHX Blurst or Earthquaker Rainbow Machine, the first two are more traditional effects whilst the latter two are weird, but possibly really fun. I wonder if keyboard forums have people complaining about "modern synths" and meaning anything newer than a Melotron.

 

It's absolutely fine to run without a pedalboard, to run with a pedalboard of any size you want to have or to use multi-effect units. I don't know what I'd do with 20 pedals, though I'm not really one for creating lush textured soundscapes so beautiful you would hardly need another instrument and could basically just record the bass and boom, there's a whole piece of music (but Cici seems to be).

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, BassAdder60 said:

I don’t think it’s only covers bands that use their own PA

 

Depends on the venues and how low down the music train you are as many original acts do start in pubs and using their own PA 

 

Youre right if you are an established originals act then house or venue PA and sound engineer would be normal but that’s a totally different bag of chips ! 

 

In over 40 years of gigging I've only come across just a few originals bands who owned their own PA, and it was either because they used to be a covers band or because they had their own permanent rehearsal room and needed one for that. Since the mid 90s it's been in-house PAs everywhere no matter how small the venue, and before that there were several local small PA hire companies who were geared up specifically for the originals bands circuit.

 

[Dad3353]

6 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

... Plus playing with effects can be really fun. Making a huge wall of noise with overdrive, fuzz, delay and reverb and then at the end of the song letting it ring out into a squealing, snarling mess is about the best fun I've had with my clothes on! I honestly suggest you try it! 😁

 

You are @Leonard Smalls and I claim my £5. 

[la bam]

At the moment in the different bands I'm in im:

 

Bass-lead-amp

Bass-lead-preamp pedal-desk

 

The best sounds I've ever had are just direct and no pedals. For some reason I always try pedals before an amp again and again but when I go back to keeping it simple it does sound better. 

[alant]

Another Bass-Lead-Amp player here. Works for me in my current band.

 

[DGBass]

7 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Only covers bands need their own PA.

 

Originals bands play venues with in-house PAs and engineers. Since the mid 90s the only venues I have played with an originals band that didn't have their own PA were ones that do not normally put on live music and for those we hired in a PA.

My covers band do indeed supply their own PA. Got me thinking though, the originals band I'm in also supply their own PA and thats my simplest setup. Bass - Lead - Tascam24. And of coure finally the PA.

[fretmeister]

Phew! We haven’t had this topic for about 6 months!

 

My anxiety was starting to kick in. I can relax now.

[dclaassen]

11 hours ago, peteb said:

 

And, do I lose points for that?? 

 

Nope…it’s a friendly game…

[Downunderwonder]

10 hours ago, BigRedX said:

Only covers bands need their own PA.

Absolutism fails again. Or do you post this kind of thing just to get a rise?

 

Originals bands with no PA would never get out of their band leaders' studio round here.