Pedals That Can Imitate A Bass Player

Duppy03

Me and a drummer mate are going to have a heavy rock/stoner jam, to keep things simple I was going to look into getting a pedal I could use to imitate a bass player, by splitting my guitar signal into a bass amp.

I'm aware of the Boss OC-3 being okay(ish) for this sort of thing, but was wondering if there was anything else out there that might do a better job.

Could the Digitech Trio+ work if I turn the Drum control all the way down? Any other recommendations would be great.

LionAquaLooper

The Trio+ will obviously create it's own bassline (as opposed to you creating one yourself) but if that's okay with you then yes it's good. 

stickyfiddle

Boss OC5 is great. Also Digitech drop or Ricochet 

JezWynd

The Digitech Ricochet does a very clean, quite natural sounding bass using its octave down setting. It’s basically a Whammy minus the treadle.

LionAquaLooper

stickyfiddle said:

Boss OC5 is great. Also Digitech drop or Ricochet 

OC5 is what I use. Has that great feature where you can set it to only apply the effect up to a certain frequency. So i use mine to only sub octave the low E and A strings. 

Sporky

Over the top, but a Roland VG-88 lets you octave any strings you want. You need a hex pickup though.

I wonder about having piezos on just the E and A with their own output, and running those through a POG or similar.

UnclePsychosis

For the price of any of these pedals you'll probably find a squier affinity on gumtree and it will be better than all of them... 

BintyTwanger77

LionAquaLooper said:

stickyfiddle said:

Boss OC5 is great. Also Digitech drop or Ricochet 

OC5 is what I use. Has that great feature where you can set it to only apply the effect up to a certain frequency. So i use mine to only sub octave the low E and A strings. 

I use an OC-5 for this as well, it’s perfect for it. I don’t think any other octave pedal can only apply the effect to specific strings/frequencies.

newi123

To truly imitate a bass player you`ll need the following pedals:

EHX `The Short Strap`
Boss `Miss the Bridge` - (I believe the Waza version will allow you to choose to miss the bridge or the longer second verse)
Way Huge `Single man`

Apart from this its just a baggy pair of jeans and an inappropriate long hair cut I think?

CarpeDiem

The Digitech Trio+ gives you the option of a simple or more complex bass part, but you have to pre-record the rhythm part in advance so it knows what to play bass to. I think it’s a good pedal.

Of the other pedals suggested already, I’ve only got experience of the Digitech Drop, which I rate highly. It will do a convincing bass part. I’m not sure how it will work if it’s just you and a drummer, eg are you looking to split your signal (like Mike Kerr does in Royal Blood)? If so, I suspect you may need to play less notes simultaneously to avoid it getting too mushy. In any case, it sounds like a fun experiment!

stickyfiddle

UnclePsychosis said:

For the price of any of these pedals you'll probably find a squier affinity on gumtree and it will be better than all of them... 

Despite having already replied above I do full agree with this. 

Also you need to play like a bassist, which is very different to guitar unless you’re just playing root notes

fretmeister

Have you thought about getting a bassist?

There are some around who avoid meeting the Rule 2 criteria.

LionAquaLooper

Yea I play bass and into heavy rock/stoner stuff  

jca74

Is there a pedal which will argue with the drummer?

AntonHunter

UnclePsychosis said:

For the price of any of these pedals you'll probably find a squier affinity on gumtree and it will be better than all of them... 

Pretty tricky to play whilst also playing guitar though.

AntonHunter

This is what I used in that situation

https://www.submarinepickup.com/blogs/demos/submarine-x-mxr-sub-machine

But it was a bit of a faff, and would have much preferred a real bassist. Still got the Submarine pickup in the drawer, haven't found a use for it since.

jellybelly

I use a HX FX to do this - use the crossover filter and split the signal (with the split at a super low value) then process the two signals separately - bass has polycapo to drop it an octave, a drive and then there are a couple.of Bass preamps in there too. Run that straight to the desk out of the right channel, run the guitar to an amp out of the left channel. 

Poly capo is DSP hungry but there's generally enough left for a couple of dirt boxes, a delay and a reverb on the guitar side, plus you can map several FX to a single foot switch, so you can kick in overdrive on bass and guitar. 

I've found my Jaguar (so short scale, narrow field Fender single coils) tracks best of all my guitars, avoid using the neck pickup too.

(PS I found this works much better than a Boss OC5. Gigged both.)

Sporky

AntonHunter said:

UnclePsychosis said:

For the price of any of these pedals you'll probably find a squier affinity on gumtree and it will be better than all of them... 

Pretty tricky to play whilst also playing guitar though.

Doubleneck and looper, El Ten Eleven style?

UnclePsychosis

AntonHunter said:

UnclePsychosis said:

For the price of any of these pedals you'll probably find a squier affinity on gumtree and it will be better than all of them... 

Pretty tricky to play whilst also playing guitar though.

Well, yes, but conveniently enough it has exactly the same tricky factor as "playing guitar through an octave pedal into a bass amp in order to imitate a bass guitar at the same time as playing guitar" so it'll all come out in the wash. 

Sporky

Has anyone done stoner rock on a Chapman Stick?

jellybelly

UnclePsychosis said:

AntonHunter said:

UnclePsychosis said:

For the price of any of these pedals you'll probably find a squier affinity on gumtree and it will be better than all of them... 

Pretty tricky to play whilst also playing guitar though.

Well, yes, but conveniently enough it has exactly the same tricky factor as "playing guitar through an octave pedal into a bass amp in order to imitate a bass guitar at the same time as playing guitar" so it'll all come out in the wash. 

Can confirm, it takes some getting used to. Any complexity in the lower registers results in the tracking going awry/flubby - keeping your strumming hand consistent in it's attack is also part of the knack. Leaving the fifth out of chords helps, you can do more complex voicings on the plain strings then of you keep the root and octave consistent. I would be very impressed if someone could sing AND play cleanly enough to keep the tracking consistent.