Fender has just launched some pedalboard gold for bass players with the Bassman effects lineup. There are five stompboxes in total, each an all-original design.
All the main food groups are covered in this collection: overdrive, fuzz, reverb, delay and the all-important compressor pedal. Though there is no chorus pedal, sadly. Maybe in the new year.
All have a side-mounted pad switch to accommodate active basses, soft-touch relay switching, top-mounted jacks and a road-worthy aluminium chassis.
There is the Bassman Driver, an overdrive pedal with a wide sweep of gain, from mild break-up a la the tube amp that gives this series the name to quote/unquote “hi-gain chunk”, which is something all of us need at some point in another – and, crucially, it keeps the integrity of your low-end intact, which is something your audience will thank you for.
The Bassman Fuzz is for engaging wooly mammoth mode on bass guitar. The Blend control will help you dial in how much clarity you want the signal, while the Voice switch toggles between a vintage-style compressed fuzz and a more open-sounding modern voicing.
An internal tone pot adjusts your high-end response while a slide switch dials in your mids.
The delay pedal has a pair of digital delay modes, a Low switch for shaping the low-end presence in the repeats, while high and low cut controls inside the pedal allow you to fine-tune it to your rig – a set and forget kind of deal. This has switchable true bypass or buffered with trails.
It is a similar setup with the Bassman Reverb pedal. This two has two DSP modes, Room and Hall.
A Low-Cut knob is on-hand to clean up the sort of murk that comes with bass frequency ambience, while the Pre-Delay switch puts a little space between the note begin played and the reverb trails.
You can set the length of the Pre-Delay via an internal trimmer, and adjust a Damp control to dial in its high-end response.
Finally, the Bass Compressor applies a studio-style RMS compression to keep your transients in order, and it might just the be the hardest-working, most always-on of all of these bass effects.
Like its siblings, it is a simple three-knob design with a pair of switches for adjusting the ratio and release of the compression, knobs for Blend, Level and Compression. And again, there are two internal controls for attack and release.
The Bassman Effects are priced £94/$119 for the Driver, Fuzz and Compressor, £109/$119 for the Reverb and Delay. For more details, head over to Fender.
