A
s a part-time bass and baritone
guitar player I am often frustrated
by how lame many guitar effects
sound on these instruments, and
also by how difficult it can be to find good
effects designed specifically for them. The
situation now is naturally quite a bit better
than it ever has been, living as we do in this
golden era of effects and technology, but
it can still be a depressing chore slogging
through websites, catalogs and gear stores
seeking out the few bass-frequency-friendly
effects amidst the mountains of bass-unfriendly ones. There just aren’t as many
companies making pedals designed to
handle the full spectrum of low frequencies,
presumably because bassists and other lownote specialists just don’t buy pedals in
nearly the quantities that guitarists do. But
are bassists buying less because there just
aren’t as many bass effects to buy? It’s a real
chicken-and-egg sort of quandary, friends.
with bass frequencies in mind. There are more
of these around than one might expect, and
quite a few are excellent. Here are some of
our favorite wah pedals for bass, baritone
guitars, extended range guitars, drop-tuned
axes, and other instruments that make big
low-frequency sounds.
But I digress. The specific thing I came
here to talk about is the search for a great
wah that won’t choke off the low tones. A
guitar wah like a standard-issue Cry Baby
or something similar is clearly not designed
to handle low frequency information in a
musical way. I would guess that most bassists
have probably tried a guitar wah at one time
or another and came away disappointed
with the sound, which typically attenuates
and smears pretty much all of the crucial
bottom frequencies. Bassists that have a
two-amp rig, or some way to split the signal
into separate dry and effects chains, often
use this method to keep the low-end intact
while using a wah, but a simpler solution is
probably a wah pedal specifically engineered
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