To tame, tighten up or enhance the presence of every bass note or just make them last infinitely longer, it's simply worth stocking your pedalboard with a compressor, limiter or sustainer pedal.
The Best Compressor Pedal for Bass
Here, bassists will find a more-than-healthy selection of stompboxes, each fully prepped to hone their bass sound. If you need something that's going to really push your bass lines to the front of the mix, then it makes sense to enlist the service of a dedicated bass compressor pedal. Unlike compressor pedals designed for guitars, a bass 'comp' is better equipped to handle the deep-diving, lower frequencies that your bass guitar produces, so it keeps your tone fully intact.
Bass Compressor/Sustainers vs. Bass Compressor/Limiters
If you just want to cap the volume peaks to make sure that no line or lick reaches above a 0dB limit and you're avoiding any unwanted distortion, then rather than a compressor, you'll just need a limiter. If you want to reduce the difference between louder and quieter notes and give your sound a tight and consistent feel, then a straight-up compressor will do the job - and can even be used to give your overall volume and presence a clean boost at the same time. Of course, if you want each note to ring out longer, then a sustainer pedal will do it for you, but if you need a shot volume that you can trigger at just the right moment to really enhance the bridge or chorus, then you could opt for a bass booster pedal, or for a more focussed boost, there are always bass equalizer and tone pedals.
Studio-Grade Multi-Band Compression for the Bass
The point of compression is to minimise the difference in dynamics (so, the difference between louder and quieter in your playing), but it's not necessarily an effect that you want across the board. Instead, you can inject a greater dynamic range into specific frequencies of your bass sound using a more extensive multi-band compressor. With these stompboxes, you can adjust the frequency bands separately. This way you can do stuff like keep the mid-range and lower frequencies at a fairly similar level while packing the higher frequencies with the necessary dynamics, which enhances the overall dynamic expression that happens between louder and quieter passages but without your bass sound rising and falling too much in volume. If you want an extra-raw or extreme bass sound? Then have a look at our range of bass overdrive and distortion pedals and bass fuzz pedals.
