While many bass players appreciate the simplicity of plugging a great bass guitar straight into an amp, there are plenty of tones and textures available when you use bass pedals.
Some bassists prefer to keep things simple, with minimal alteration to their signal, while others stack overdrives, flangers, and more for an out-of-this-world tonal experience.
For any new bassists just starting out, I’d recommend trying the pedals on this list. Some, like the tuner, are absolutely essential to live performance. Others, like the compressor, are so useful that they may as well be mandatory.
Other pedals are nice to have, even if you don’t use them for every song, and can be used sparingly to flavor your performance.
Table of Contents
What Are Bass Pedals?
Bass pedals are small units, typically turned on or off by a footswitch, that are used to add effects to your bass’ tone. Originally, there were no bass effects units at all. There were large guitar effects units, like the Echoplex, but small pedals as we know them only came into fashion in the late ‘70s before taking off in the ‘80s.
When bass players started using guitar effects pedals for their rigs, many noticed that the different frequencies of the bass guitar yielded a different effect. For example, what sounds like a lush, warbling chorus on a Fender Stratocaster yielded a muddy tone on a bass guitar, and required tweaking.
Accordingly, pedal manufacturers began producing pedals tailored for use with the bass guitar. While you can use guitar effects on the bass, such as some distortions, for the most part, you’re better off using bass effects explicitly marked as such with your instrument.
Pedalboards
If you’re assembling an array of bass pedals, you’ll notice that transporting them from home to a gig is easier said than done. That’s why so many players use pedalboards like the Pedaltrain to keep their pedals in a fixed order, ready to go from home to van to stage.
I personally use the Boss BCB-60, with room for six pedals and a mains power supply.
Without further ado, the following are, in my opinion, the most essential pedals for every bassist.
Tuner
If you ever plan on playing with other musicians, live or in the studio, you need a tuner. Tuners do more than just keep your instrument in tune, although that should definitely be a high priority.
Most pedal tuners totally shut off your signal from the tuner onwards, allowing you to tune your instrument without making the audience listen to you doing so. Some, like the Boss TU-3, allow you to power other pedals from the tuner.
The TU-3 is the industry standard thanks to its easy-to-read LED display and durable construction. I’ve had mine for twelve years, surviving summer tours and flights in that time. It even outlasted some of the vans and cars we used to tour in!
Another popular tuner is the Korg Pitchblack, or the Polytune, which has the nifty feature of telling you exactly which of your strings is out of tune.
Compressor
The compressor, apart from a tuner, is probably the most useful effect for a bass player.
Compression makes quiet sounds louder and loud sounds quieter. For players using a pick, it helps highlight your pick attack. For players who use their fingers, it can even out the dynamics.
Compression is one of the most commonly used bass effects because of how well it ensures dynamic consistency and improves the sustain of your notes.
Compression is so popular because it makes bass players sound better while also making them play better. It helps cover for inconsistencies in right-hand pressure and attack.
However, it also highlights issues with poor technique, such as string talk (the scraping sound between frets) and poor muting. Highlighting these unwanted sounds encourages players to work on this technique, often unconsciously.
The leading compressor is the Keeley Compressor Plus, or the Keeley Compressor Plus for Bass. It boasts a metal enclosure and independent controls for the amount of compression and the balance between compressed and uncompressed signals, even allowing you to adjust between single-coil and humbucker-equipped instruments.
You can also adjust the tone of your compressed signal on instruments that can be too bright or too warm when compressed.
Limiters have a similar effect, such as this Boss Limiter/Enhancer, simply catching the clips and peaks of your sound. If you find your bass to be too aggressive-sounding or fizzy, a limiter might do the trick.
Boss’ Bass Compressor is another excellent compressor designed for the frequency response of a bass guitar.
Overdrive & Distortion
Although most guitar players swear by their favorite overdrive and distortion tones, it’s much less common to hear an overdriven bass. Even in more extreme metal genres, bass tones tend to be cleaner than the guitar sound.
Listen to Megadeth’s “Peace Sells,” or Ozzy Osbourne’s “No More Tears,” for example. The bass tones are not particularly distorted, even though the guitar is heavily saturated.
Cleaner bass sounds are popular because they stand out so much against the tone of the guitar. However, a little overdrive can be a great sound for bass. Cliff Burton of Metallica and Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead had instantly recognizable overdriven tones. Think of the intro to “Ace of Spades” as a classic example of bass drive.
Bass distortion is the sort of effect that is more often felt than heard. You may not always hear the grit and grunt of a distorted bass, but it definitely affects how the bass sits in the mix.
With that in mind, the classic bass drive is the EHX Bass Big Muff. It offers plenty of gain, from subtle Motown-ready grunt to full-bore ultra-fuzzy stoner rock.
With the right bass and amp combo, most players could do a decent approximation of the wide, thick bass sound of peak Sabbath or the first Wolfmother album with this pedal.
Another great bass distortion, with plenty of grit and grunt, is the Proco Fat RAT. Any of the RAT series will do a great job, but the Fat RAT has a frequency response well suited to the lower tones of the bass guitar.
Wah & Envelope Filter
Perhaps the only onomatopoeia pedal, wah does exactly what it sounds like. It manipulates your instrument’s midrange to make it sound like it’s going “wah wah.” Think the intro to Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return),” or the solo from “Enter Sandman.”
Because a typical wah pedal is tailored to the six-string guitar, bass players need bass-specific wah pedals.
If you want to nail the expressive bass sound from Black Sabbath’s “NIB” or Metallica’s “Anesthesia,” you’ll need a bass wah pedal.
It’s hard to look past the standard-setting Bass Cry Baby, which is a rugged, durable pedal that is specifically voiced for the lower voice of a bass guitar.
Cliff Burton famously used a Morley Power Wah, which is ostensibly a guitar effect, with a bright, mid-heavy tone.
Similar to the wah is the envelope filter. The envelope filter is like an automatic wah with more dynamic response. The bass tone on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ version of “Higher Ground” is a great example of this effect.
Envelope filters react to the amplitude of your notes. The harder you play (like Flea in “Higher Ground”), the more pronounced the “wah” effect is. As the note decays, the filter backs off, leaving you with more “ooh” at the end of your “wah” sound.
The MXR M82 is one of the most popular envelope filters tailored to the bass guitar’s unique frequency range. Even easier to use, with only three knobs, is Electro-Harmonix’s Micro Q-Tron.
Chorus
The chorus effect isn’t just for guitarists playing the intro to “Purple Rain” or “Every Breath You Take”. Chorus on the bass guitar is a very effective tonal coloration and can be so subtle most listeners will barely notice.
The chorus pedal simulates the sound of multiple instruments playing at once and can give your bass a thicker, denser tone. It can boost your signal, making a dry bass tone come to a shimmering, colorful life.
Chorus can be used as a relatively subtle always-on effect and the cornerstone of your bass sound, or as an occasional color to boost your tone or add shape and dimension in particular moments of your live set.
Guns N’ Roses bass player Duff McKagan used a metallic chorus tone on many of the band’s biggest hits, most notably on the intro to “You Could Be Mine.” It helps highlight McKagan’s aggressive pick attack and slinky attention to the ebb and flow of the song’s rhythm.
The MXR Bass Chorus is great for that washy ’80s-style bass tone. It offers the sort of shimmering, watery chorus that characterized the classic ‘80s clean tone. While some players also use the MXR analog chorus, that pedal is designed for use with an electric guitar and can be too tinny and thin for use with a bass guitar.
For something more versatile, the EHX Bass Clone is a similar size and offers a wider range of chorus sounds, from full-blown chorus saturation to a subtle thickening effect perfect for playing with a cleaner ensemble.
Phaser/Flanger
Phaser and flanger are the “whooshing” tones of many classic ‘70s hits. The bass intro to Thin Lizzy’s “Waiting for an Alibi” is a classic flanger sound.
These modulation effects are not dissimilar from chorus, but are applied very differently. They create a feeling of motion and texture in the music, helping propel and highlight the groove of your song.
They were particularly popular with ‘70s funk and disco players for this reason.
The flanger effect also became very popular with alternative and heavy players in the ‘90s, with Tool’s Justin Chancellor a particular proponent of the Boss BF-2. You can pick up the upgraded version, the BF-3, these days, which has a few additional features such as tap tempo.
For the more subtle ‘70s-style flanger and phase sounds, I once played with a bassist who managed to replicate the Thin Lizzy-phased bass tone with an MXR flanger.
For phaser, the go-to phaser tone comes from the Phase 90, but I do recommend using the Script variation, which has a warmer, true-to-vintage sound
Volume
Volume pedals might seem a little counterintuitive. Can’t you just turn your bass up (or down) on the bass, or at the amplifier?
The answer, surprisingly, is no. Controlling your overall volume without altering your tone is far easier said than done.
First of all, changing down the volume on your bass amp can affect the amount of overdrive and compression naturally coming out of the amp. Changing the volume on your bass guitar simply reduces or increases the signal leaving your instrument. Turning down on your bass just weakens your signal, thereby affecting your tone.
Volume pedals, on the other hand, are designed to boost or reduce volume without affecting your gain levels or signal strength.
The other factor with a volume pedal is convenience. You can adjust your volume easily while playing, simply by rocking your foot on a pedal.
This makes a few things easier. You might need a volume boost for a bass solo. You can also create volume swells and fade-ins, which can be a powerful effect when used correctly.
Gary Moore actually used three volume pedals on stage to control the relative levels of other instruments in his foldback, a pretty convenient way to adjust your mix without bothering the mixing engineer.
The Boss Volume Pedal is built like a tank, offers a full boost or cut, and is specifically designed for use with high-impedance instruments like bass and guitar.
Another great option is the Ernie Ball volume pedal, which is competitively priced and comfortable to use.
Echo Effects
You won’t hear the tense, repeated echoes of delay on bass guitar too frequently, but reverb is a common fixture of bass pedalboards.
Unlike guitar amps, bass amps rarely come with a built-in reverb feature. It’s an odd omission, considering how useful reverb can be for bassists. Effectively, reverb creates an echo effect.
Think about the difference in sound between speaking in a living room and speaking in a bathroom. In the bathroom, the sound of your voice bounces off all the hard surfaces, creating a spacious echoing sound. That’s what reverb does.
Good reverb pedals allow you to adjust the amount of echo, as if you’re adjusting the size of the “bathroom”. While reverb on a bass risks a muddy, undefined tone, the right reverb pedal offers tones that could be ambient and thoughtful, or fill out the bottom end in a power trio.
Boutique reverb pedals have been all the rage in recent years thanks to a rise in shoegaze, indie, and dream-pop music made on guitars. The TC Electronic Hall of Fame is a wonderfully diverse reverb pedal that sees use across many instruments, including bass and both electric and acoustic guitar.
The other great pedal, and one that offers a more luscious, diverse reverb experience, is the Electro-Harmonix Oceans 11.
I often find that reverb is the sort of effect that you won’t notice at first. However, once you’ve started using reverb, you’ll really start noticing its absence.
On the other hand, more rarely used is the delay effect. Delay is more associated with guitar players, such as in the intro to Van Halen’s “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love.”
However, bass players like Living Colour’s Doug Wimbish often use delay pedals in their solo sections or to help build the overall ambience of a song.
Delay is more of a garnish than a must-have flavor for playing bass, but I highly recommend the Boss Digital Delay. Because the delay pedal simply replicates the sound of your bass, you won’t need a bass-specific delay.
Octave Pedals
In the event that you need to create additional layers with your bass, pitching it way up or way down, you might want to consider an octave pedal.
While octave pedals aren’t necessarily every player’s cup of tea, they’re very useful in certain situations. Take the two-piece rock band Royal Blood, fronted by a single bass player. Mike Kerr, the band’s bass-wielding frontman, uses an Electro-Harmonix Polyphonic Octave Generator to cover the frequency range normally filled by an electric guitar.
For those for whom the many knobs and dials of the POG are simply too much, the Digitech Bass Whammy offers a much simpler user interface.
Preamp
Bass preamps are most useful for the gigging bass player. Sharing backline or plugging straight into the PA can be fraught with danger, as your painstakingly sculpted tone finds itself at the mercy of whatever is available at the venue.
Enter bass preamp pedals, the most convenient way to conjure a reliable tone in the studio or on the road. You won’t find preamps on every bassist’s pedalboard, but they’re increasingly popular.
Preamp pedals effectively offer the tone-shaping capabilities of the front half of an amplifier in a pedal-sized enclosure.
With that in mind, it makes sense that legendary British amp manufacturer Orange produces one of the most versatile, popular preamps on the market. Apart from its classic Orange tone, the Orange Bass Butler has three extremely convenient outputs, one XLR, one ¼ inch output, and a “dirty” output.
The other most popular bass preamp I’ve seen is the Darkglass Alpha Omega Ultra V2, with a headphone out and aux in for home rehearsal/recording application. The onboard graphic EQ is pretty handy for switching up your tone on the fly, too.
Final Verdict: What Should I Get?
The answer to this question lies in what you plan to use. The best pedal is the one that makes you want to play and makes you sound good. For some bassists, that means zero pedals. For others, it means a complex pedalboard to rival the starship Enterprise.
In my experience, you’re usually better off having an option than not having it. Some bass pedals you simply cannot do without. The tuner is an absolute must-have for any musician, if only because being in tune makes your music sound good.
However, each of the pedal categories outlined in this article can be extremely useful, and it’s rare to find a bass player who wants to gig without at least a few of them.
In particular, the compressor, volume pedal, wah, drive, and echo effects tend to be versatile enough to cover a variety of gigs, and once you start using the phaser/flanger/chorus family of pedals, you’ll hear those effects on many of your favorite songs.
Even the octave pedal, which remains divisive among bass players who insist that they only want to play notes below the low E of an electric guitar, finds its way into a broad variety of songs. Effects pedals have a way of nurturing and spurring creativity, often at a very affordable price point for the working musician.