Reverb with overdrive

[SteveXFR]

I accidentally added reverb to a heavily overdriven bass track in my DAW. I like the noise it made and thought it could be an interesting effect to add for baas breaks in songs.

Has anyone tried this? Does it work well in the real world? Would a cheap Behringer reverb be any good or should I splash out on a fancy one?

[dannybuoy]

It can work well in the right setting. I’ve been considering picking up the newish Fender bass reverb since it allows you to filter out the low end from the reverb signal, as you don’t want too much of the low frequencies being reverberated.

[itu]

An old trick, and very functional. A hint of reverb makes the distorted sound nicer and fuller (to me, at least).

 

I am using a reverb named Nimbus, that has a HPF, and a LPF made by Taylor Livingston. Works well, also with dist/fuzz/OD.

[neepheid]

As with any effect experiment, I'd say try a cheapo first to see how it goes.  Prove the concept first, then upgrade if you think it needs it.  That's what I did with pitch shifters - bought a cheapo first, that went surprisingly well but there was room to improve so I got a better one.

[MichaelDean]

Yeah, I use a lot of reverb and delay with +/- 1 octave for good measure to make a big wall of bass for slower doomy bits in songs. I just found a use for a shimmer reverb for evil swells too. 

 

I've got a Boss GX-100 as the brains of my pedalboard. I like that it gives me lots of options to try different things as I think of them. Maybe try getting a used Zoom MS60b or something like that?

[SteveXFR]

9 hours ago, MichaelDean said:

Yeah, I use a lot of reverb and delay with +/- 1 octave for good measure to make a big wall of bass for slower doomy bits in songs. I just found a use for a shimmer reverb for evil swells too. 

 

I've got a Boss GX-100 as the brains of my pedalboard. I like that it gives me lots of options to try different things as I think of them. Maybe try getting a used Zoom MS60b or something like that?

 

Do you use the GX100 in to an amp or straight out the DI?

[MichaelDean]

26 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

Do you use the GX100 in to an amp or straight out the DI?

I'm using it like a pedalboard into my head. I've got some extra dirt pedals in the effects loop too - some of the digital ones weren't quite doing it for me. I had a Zoom B3n before the GX which I added a load of the guitar stuff to. It wasn't a bad unit, but I wanted more footswitches and the inbuilt expression pedal. That's fun too. I've got it hooked up to delay times and feedback for some patches for general weird sounds between songs.

[BigRedX]

I use it on one song. It occurs in a section of minimal instrumentation where the bass is doing the main part and it took at lot of tweaking in the rehearsal room to get the right balance of all the parameters. I wouldn't fancy doing it without a programmable multi-effects unit as the distortion setting are completely different to the ones I use without the reverb.

[WinterMute]

Used sparingly it can be very effective, I mainly use in on fretless in very sparse arrangements that feature quite a lot of reverb on other instruments, and I make sure to apply a HPF to the reverb itself to ensure the bottom end doesn't get bloated and unfocussed, set at about 150Hz if I remember rightly.

[LeftyJ]

EBS make a nice reverb specifically for bass, the Dynaverb. It's had a few updates through the years, and it's fairly expensive but can be found used for decent prices. It doesn't offer a low cut, only a passive tone control that cuts the treble. It is voiced specifically for bass though.