If you were going to build a compact Bass pedalboard?

swelchy

swelchy

Well-known member
What would be your must haves? I know nothing about Bass. Our church uses some small sansamp / tech 21 bass fly rig pedal that has a few built in effects... If I were to build a small pedalboard for all the Bass players what would be a good selections of must haves for some phat clean tones for them? I have an extra pedaltrain PT-1 and a power supply hanging around and I thought about building a few pedals to put on there and leave on stage for the Bass players.. Compression maybe an overdrive and some sort of preamp.. possibly an XLR out type of direct out pedal or something?
 
swelchy said:
What would be your must haves? I know nothing about Bass. Our church uses some small sansamp / tech 21 bass fly rig pedal that has a few built in effects... If I were to build a small pedalboard for all the Bass players what would be a good selections of must haves for some phat clean tones for them? I have an extra pedaltrain PT-1 and a power supply hanging around and I thought about building a few pedals to put on there and leave on stage for the Bass players.. Compression maybe an overdrive and some sort of preamp.. possibly an XLR out type of direct out pedal or something?
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My bare minimum must-haves on bass are tuner, HPF (if none of the others have it built-in), compressor, and preamp/D.I. If you have a little more room my nice-to-haves are chorus, fuzz/OD, and envelope filter.
 
I’m in the process of building a compact bass board. Vigilante is pretty spot on. My plan is tuner -> comp -> bass klon -> ce-2 -> dm-2 -> EQ. That may not sound that compact at first. Everything will be in a 1590B enclosure though.
 
jcpst said:
I’m in the process of building a compact bass board. Vigilante is pretty spot on. My plan is tuner -> comp -> bass klon -> ce-2 -> dm-2 -> EQ. That may not sound that compact at first. Everything will be in a 1590B enclosure though.
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I say compact... but the extra pedaltrain board I have is 22" x 12 1/2"... Thats a good bit of pedals
 
I have tried a few and though there are lots of fun things you can do I pretty much go with ...

Tuner -> Drebbel Bass pre-amp/EQ -> Mofeta Preamp -> DI

Pristine clean and shaping is easily done with the Drebbel. If you want a bit of saturation that sounds good in a mix the Mofeta with volume up and Brite and Normal low works well. And you can stack them carefully to get a bit of extra without losing your core sound.


My next Mofeta I will likely swap the A1M pots for normal and Brite to something smaller because I never turn them more than 1/3 of the eay up. A500Ks seem about right.

I will also try the Equilux out soon to see if I like that to shape the core tone ahead of the preamp of choice.
 
Tuner & HPF, first and foremost.

Arguably I'd say HPF is more important for me, 'cause I can tune my DB to another band-member's instrument or to an phone-app tuner, but having a dedicated tuner to plug into (not a clip-on) is great even for acoustic-only gigs. However, in an ensemble setting within a church, silent independent tuning would be de rigueur.

I gigged for a few years with only those two, tuner & HPF.

DI & EQ would be the next pairing, EQ having a notch-filter to fight feedback (I only ever gigged my double-bass).

Next up, compressor/limiter, depending on the needs of the different players in your church.

After that, everything's icing on the bass-cake.

GREAT suggestions have already been made regarding preamps & ODs; sounds like you're going for warmth and full sound rather than outright grit.

Flanger can fake chorus and phaser, so that would be my go-to for modulation.

Unless a specific song calls for it, I doubt you'll need delay or reverb in a church setting. For your "phat clean tones" I'd hook up a double-tracker before I'd put a distinct delay on bass.




So... yeah, what jcpst said, Vigilante is spot on.
 
I generally don't use any wet effects on bass. Certainly can be fun but if I'm looking at filling out a board and space is limited, it's not going to be an essential for my uses...

My last small bass board was just tuner, compressor, OD (Bass Klon), HP/LP (broughton/PPCB frequency interchange), DI (Sansamp/Madbean sludgehammer)

I also really like ODs in the rat-family on bass and of course at some point am going to get around to trying out one of the c2c DI's
 
Feral Feline said:
Tuner & HPF, first and foremost.

Arguably I'd say HPF is more important for me, 'cause I can tune my DB to another band-member's instrument or to an phone-app tuner, but having a dedicated tuner to plug into (not a clip-on) is great even for acoustic-only gigs. However, in an ensemble setting within a church, silent independent tuning would be de rigueur.

I gigged for a few years with only those two, tuner & HPF.

DI & EQ would be the next pairing, EQ having a notch-filter to fight feedback (I only ever gigged my double-bass).

Next up, compressor/limiter, depending on the needs of the different players in your church.

After that, everything's icing on the bass-cake.

GREAT suggestions have already been made regarding preamps & ODs; sounds like you're going for warmth and full sound rather than outright grit.

Flanger can fake chorus and phaser, so that would be my go-to for modulation.

Unless a specific song calls for it, I doubt you'll need delay or reverb in a church setting. For your "phat clean tones" I'd hook up a double-tracker before I'd put a distinct delay on bass.




So... yeah, what jcpst said, Vigilante is spot on.
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For the most part the players they rotate through.. about five different guys show up with only their bass and plug into the fiddly little pedal they have on stage.. One guy has a complete pedalboard with all kinds of nice pedals... His goes as deep as any of us.. has flanger, octave pedals, delays and all kinds of other goodies. I'm not trying to break the bank to build/donate something but I do want to make them a solid board. I will definitely have to spend a little money on a tuner for the board and anything else I can't build myself.
I'm thinking Tuner>EQ> Compression> some sort of light drive> Chorus> some sort of preamp/DI XLR Out.
 
Typically if I am on bass it’s a volume pedal and maybe a chorus or vibe. My son’s board runs a digitech whammy, general tso compressor, Drebbel pre, Jimi Lee OBD-3, MBP Touchstone, and a DMD-2. All but the whammy are in a pedaltrain nano. Of those he uses the Whammy the most with the compressor and pre always on. He plays a fretless jazz bass. Let’s be real, it’s a church board so they really only want boring utility. I recently “upgraded” my home bass rig and purchased a Quilter Interbass 45 will run a monitor speaker and go direct FOH simple but sounds pretty damn good.
 
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