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Experimenting with tone, style, and modulation effects is one of the things people look forward to the most when learning to play bass. These variations in sound are achieved through the use of bass effects pedals.
If you have more than one pedal, it’s most efficient to arrange them together on what’s known as a pedal board. But how can you make sure your pedals are in the correct order?
Keep reading for my comprehensive guide on setting up your bass pedal board, including tips on the must-have pedals for bass players and which questions to ask yourself to help you achieve the perfect sound.
Let’s dive in.
Before we launch into the ins and outs of setting up your ideal pedal board, let’s go over a few important terms.
- Dry signal: What your guitar sounds like by itself — no pedals, no amp, just an unplugged bass.
- Clean signal: The sound your bass guitar makes while amplified, without anything going on between your bass and your amp. (Of course, your bass controls and amp settings can affect the signal quality.) The terms “clean signal” and “dry signal” are sometimes used interchangeably.
- Signal path or signal chain: The path the sound travels from your guitar into any pedals along the way and then out through the amp.
- Patch cables: Short cables that connect your pedals together into a chain.
- Pedal chain: The assortment of pedals on your pedal board connected by patch cables.
Most pedals can be sorted into one of two categories based on whether they augment or reshape your bass’s signal.
The key to a successful pedalboard setup is knowing ahead of time what you want your bass to sound like.
Here are three questions to ask yourself that will help you figure out which types of pedals you should look into to achieve your perfect tone.
What’s the best tone quality for the types of music you want to play? Are you looking for a solid, fat bass tone, or something more punchy and aggressive?
Check out the pedals your favorite bass player uses. While you probably won’t be able to capture the exact same sound as that player, you can experiment with a similar gear set and pedal configuration to create your own version of their tone.
The genre and style of music you plan on performing may affect the types of pedals you decide to invest in. You probably don’t need to worry too much about distortion or overdrive if you’re mostly performing jazz; however, those two pedals will definitely come in handy if you’re playing rock or funk.
If you’re jamming with others, remember to take the whole band into account. What types of pedals does your guitar player use? Are there songs on your setlist where effects like reverb and overdrive would be appropriate?
It’s crucial to determine your budget before you start buying pedals and setting up your board.
Bass pedalboards can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand to put together depending on the quantity and quality of the pedals.
You don’t technically need effects pedals in order to play the bass. Not all pros use them! They’re just another tool in the toolbox, and experimenting with them can be a fun and rewarding way to mess around with different tone qualities and styles of playing.
Here are some of the most popular bass effects pedals and the ones you’re most likely to see in a well-assembled pedal chain.
Pretty self-explanatory: it’s a pedal used to tune your bass.
Filter pedals alter your bass’s tone by adding or removing certain frequencies from the signal. There are multiple types of filters — such as the envelope filter, auto wah, and high pass filter — each of which has varying effects on what your bass sounds like.
With an auto wah, you can program a song’s beats per minute into the pedal so that it pulses the wah effect in time to the music. An envelope filter sounds similar, but its effect is triggered by volume rather than rhythm or timing.
Generally speaking, you won’t have much use for a high pass filter as a bassist. These pedals allow high sounds to pass through while blocking all low sounds below a certain frequency.
Octave pedals split your bass’s sound in two so that it sounds like two basses are playing at the same time a full octave apart. That extra octave can make your bass sound huge!
Use your octave pedal to dial in the upper octave if you want to fill in a gap where a guitar would normally be, or throw in the lower octave to really fill out your tone.
“Fuzz” is the term often used to describe aggressive, in-your-face sounds like distortion and overdrive. It’s not the most elegant descriptor — in fact, both overdrive and distortion can be applied subtly to add some grit to your tone rather than filling it with “fuzz.”
An overdrive pedal recreates the sound of a tube amp that’s been pushed to its limit. It clips the signal on its way to the amp, providing a somewhat compressed, slightly gritty tone.
A distortion pedal is similar to overdrive, but more dramatic in the way it reshapes the signal. Your bass will have a totally different tone using a distortion pedal.
Generally, overdrive is better for playing in groups, and distortion is best saved for solos.
A reverb pedal simulates the effect of performing in a large space by imitating the way a signal bounces off a hard surface and back to the listener.
Reverb can fill the gaps between notes, create a lush sonic landscape, and improve the sound quality when you’re performing in a dry room.
EQ pedals let you perform micro adjustments on your signal frequencies. Among other things, they can:
- Alter or enhance signal frequencies
- Tighten, shape, or adjust your sound
- Act as an additional channel on your amplifier
- Enhance your bass solos
A chorus pedal makes it sound as though multiple basses are playing all at once, thickening your sound and giving it a shimmering quality.
A compression pedal boosts the quieter notes you play while dampening the louder ones. This makes your bass sound more consistent and even.
Some players prefer to plug their compressors into the effects loop at the rear of the amp rather than including it on their pedalboard. The effects loop is essentially a port that lets players put external pedals after the preamp without including them on their pedalboards. Personally, I’ve been enjoying putting my compressor pedal at the beginning of my signal chain. So explore, use your ears, and find what works for you.
A synth pedal — sometimes called a bass synthesizer pedal — alters your bass’s signal so that it sounds like an analog synthesizer. Having a synth bass pedal in your pocket dramatically increases your versatility by allowing you to produce synth sounds on your bass.
Contrary to what you might think, setting up a pedal board for a bass guitar has more to do with personal preference than anything else. There are no hard-and-fast rules — everyone’s bass guitar rig looks a little different depending on their needs and play style.
That said, most people organize their pedal chain into an intuitive order determined by the signal path of each pedal.
Here’s the order your bass guitar pedals should typically go in:
- The bass itself. Your bass is the origin point of the signal, and therefore it should be considered the head of your signal chain.
- Tuner pedal. Tuners don’t affect the bass signal at all; for that reason, it may seem like it doesn’t matter where you place them in the chain. However, they function best when receiving an unprocessed signal, so they really should be the first installation on your pedal board.
- Filters. Envelope filters, wah pedals, and other types of filter pedals also work best with a clean signal, which means they need to come early in your signal chain.
- Compressors. Compression pedals and other pedals that affect the shape of the bass signal should come after your filters. Your compression pedal helps balance the dynamics and gives you a more consistent tone on which to build your other effects. Compressors also improve the sustain of the notes you play.
- Fuzz. Next come your distortion and overdrive pedals, sometimes referred to as “fuzz.” Placing your fuzz pedal or pedals ahead of effects that stretch or alter the frequency helps keep your tone clear and prevents your overdrive and distortion from sounding muddy.
- EQ pedals. While your EQ pedal can technically go anywhere in the chain, its placement affects the signal before and up to that point. If it’s among the first pedals in the chain, its settings will affect all of the pedals after it; if it’s toward the end, it will alter the final output of the signal as it heads out of the amp. When placed after your fuzz pedals, the EQ can prevent them from dominating or overtaking your sound.
- Pitch shifters. Your octave pedals and other pitch shifters need to come after your compressors and fuzz pedals, since they function best with a compressed signal.
- Modulators. Chorus pedals and other modulators usually sound best when placed after your overdrive and distortion pedals.
- Volume pedals. If you have pedals that alter your signal’s volume — including tremolos, limiters, or noise gates — they should be the last in the chain before your amplifier to ensure they affect the levels of all previous pedals at the same time.
- Your bass amp. The amp, PA system, or monitor is the device your sound comes out of and is considered the final element in your signal chain.
Your preamp can go at the beginning or end of your signal chain — closer to your bass or closer to your amp. It will have a different effect on your sound depending on which position you choose.
Placing your preamp at the beginning of the chain (usually right behind the tuner) helps to create a great platform on which to build your tone.
At the end of the signal chain, your preamp can shape the overall tone of all of your bass effects before the signal reaches your amp.
Some bass players recommend placing the preamp after the compressor rather than the tuner. Ultimately, the choice is up to you! Try switching up the proximity of your preamp to your bass amp until you find the sound you’re looking for.
Tinkering around with your pedalboard setup can be extremely rewarding and joyful, with endless opportunities to discover exciting new sounds and tone qualities.
However, as with most things involving unfamiliar technology, it can be frustrating and confusing if you’re going in totally blind.
Having a solid grasp of the basics of savvy pedalboard setup — including knowing which pedals should be placed before others in your chain — lets you skip most of the trial-and-error phase and jump right into tweaking your rig to suit your individual preferences.
Check out my other articles and videos for everything you need to know about playing the bass guitar!
Yes! Bass players frequently use custom-built pedal boards to help them achieve the specific bass sound they need for each song.
You can use guitar pedals for bass, but with varying degrees of success. For the most part, you’ll be missing some of the low end of your bass’s frequency range. Bass-specific pedals are designed to pick up the full range of bass frequencies.
Technically, you can achieve great sound quality without using pedals at all, and many bass players choose not to use them. You can manipulate the controls on your amp and on the bass itself to alter your instrument’s tone when you need to.
However, there are some sounds you can’t achieve without using pedals. And depending on the effects your bandmates are using, it might sound jarring or disjointed if your bass sound doesn’t match.
While it’s possible to arrange your pedals in any order you desire, a good rule of thumb is to set up your pedal chain so that the pedals that rely on a clean signal (tuner, envelope filter) are near the beginning of the chain, and the ones that affect the overall sound (volume, reverb, echo, delay) are near the end.
The bass preamp is one of the more versatile pedals in terms of placement. It can go near the beginning or end of your signal chain depending on whether you want to use it to:
– create a platform for your sounds and effects
– shape the overall tone of all of your effects put together