Effects and Other Gadgets

You are an accomplished guitarist. Therefore you know more about instrument effects or stomp boxes than I ever will. I bet you already have quite the collection, your go-to-gear is neatly arranged on a pedal board while a sizable reserve of standbys and other novelties are packed away in the back of the closet. You may be anxious about which of these you can use on bass. You may even be worried about investing in new, bass only effects. Well, I have some good news about bass effects: you do NOT need any.

Reverb, delay, phasers, flangers, chorus, overdrive, bamboozlers, and wangflappers are all completely unnecessary. Compression on the other hand is an absolute must, but as it turns out, you don’t really need that either. There, okay, I said it. 

Alright. I will pause again here for questions. Yes, you with the nose ring. (God, I hope that’s nose ring). What about having your own unique tone, you say? Well, for now don’t worry about anything but a good, solid, clean sound until you have made a full transition to this side of middle C. And then maybe, just maybe, you’ll get a Big Muff for your birthday.

Direct Box

There is one handy tool that every musician should have in their bag of tricks and that tool is a good direct box or DI box. DI stands for “direct injection”. A direct box splits the signal between your amplifier and mixing board while also converting the unbalanced signal of the instrument to a balanced signal for the mixing board. If all that technical mumbo jumbo sounds complicated just ignore it and trust me, you need a direct box. Most modern bass amps have a DI built right in but it is always good to have an alternative if the sound guy hates the signal from your amp (not uncommon) or a backup if your amp fails (uncommon). 

A good all purpose DI can be used on other things, too, like guitar and keyboards so it as wise investment no matter what. Speaking of investments, a direct box can cost as much as a nice vacation (right) or as little as a family outing to Waffle House (above). And while a high end direct box sounds fantastic, unless you also own a recording studio there is no need to shoot the moon on this one. Just keep in mind that really cheap DIs tend to be noisy at gigs and expensive DIs tend to disappear at gigs.

Metronome

Groan. I know, there is nothing more annoying than that insistent, unremitting electronic beep. In the wrong hands the metronome could be used as a torture device. However, this little agitator will make you a better player or confess that playing bass is not for you after all. But don’t give up. Alternatives include practicing with an old school drum machine or the drum loops in Garageband or just grooving along with the song you are trying to learn on YouTube. Windup Monkeys with cymbals do not keep good time.