Graphic eq pedals, bass or guitar

[BillB]

Hi folks, I am thinking of putting a pedalboard together just for fun and fiddling, based around a Boss BE-5 analogue multi fx. I particularly like the Compressor and Chorus. I would like to add some EQ, perhaps via the send-return jacks and am thinking about a second-hand Behringer graphic. I may put a bass or electric guitar through it. Just wondered what people thought of the respective ranges of bass and guitar graphics when applied to either instrument. Would one be more flexible or appropriate than another? Definitely bass for bass and guitar for guitar, or does it not much matter?

Bass pedal 50hz - 10khz
Guitar pedal 100hz - 6.4khz

Interesting that the bass has a wider high-low range.

I should add that there will likely be a few more pedals in the loop: a ‘blues’ overdrive; multi-mod (Landlord spinning room) and an analog echo.

[shufflebeat]

It depends to some extent on what gear you already have and what you are trying to achieve.

Some bass players need to manipulate the same frequencies a guitarist would, others need to work in more bass-guitar-specific frequency bands.

There are good technical reasons for the differen pedals but you'll not go too far wrong with a Boss ge-7.

[Wonks]

The EQ ranges cover the useful standard frequency ranges of the respective instruments and their amplifiers.

Low E on a guitar is about 82Hz, whilst a guitar speaker will have very little output above 6kHz.

Low E on a bass is about 41Hz. While a standard 10” to 15” bass speaker won’t go any higher than a guitar speaker, some bass amps/cabs have tweeters fitted, which make them pretty much full range; hence the higher frequency slider.

Given the typical limited number of frequency sliders on a compact pedal e.g. 7 for the Boss GE-7, you aren’t going to get very precise control of the sound, though a lot more control than a standard 3-band EQ on an amp. And a 7-band bass graphic with a wide frequency range will have bigger steps between the bands compared to a 7-band guitar graphic.

If you want to cover both guitar and bass ranges with a bit more control, then I suggest looking for a larger footprint graphic pedal, with maybe 10 bands. And for keyboards, the wider the range the better. But a GE-7 will work for all of them if you want to concentrate more on shaping the midrange, rather the extremes of bass and treble.

[BillB]

Thank you both for your thoughts. I am convinced to go for a guitar EQ rather than a bass. As a bedroom player though, I won’t be shelling out £60-100 for a Boss EQ (2nd hand - new prices). Behringer EQ700 will be good enough for my purposes.

[Murray B]

I use a graphic eq pedal in every guitar based pedal set up I have, they are very useful tools to have around. So if you are thinking of including one then I'd say go for it.

The standard 'guitar' frequencies are great for acoustic and electric guitars and
I get an A/B acoustic guitar set up with added bass for the barred heavy down beat rhythms and or when the bass player sits out on some stripped down songs. It's a good loud switch for solos as you can boost the level and the mids. Or it's a old school PA fix when you need to eq the monitors a little. I'd imagine the Behringer pedal is ok, but for a few extra quid bear in mind that the boss pedals are built to last - I've had both of my GE-7s for over 20 years.

I'm in the process of experimenting with. a 'Bass' eq - also a Boss one, in the signal path with a Pod Go so that I can have a quick and dirty eq it to sound right option depending on what cabs etc are in the mix without having to start messing with menus etc. I figure the extra options with the low and high frequencies might help in this regard, but I'm not sure yet - it might get swapped with the standard one in the acoustic pedal box.

[BillB]

Thanks, Murray. If I were a gigging musician, I would certainly go for a Boss for reliability and durability. But for my purposes the Behringer is fine, besides it is now ordered and on its way.

The bass graphic range vs guitar is interesting. I expected the bass frequency range to be simply ‘lower’ whereas it is actually ‘wider’. As Wonks pointed out, that results in wider gaps between the bands, which can only be designed out by going for say a 10 band EQ. So for a small pedal format, the guitar option was the best compromise for me.

[BillB]

The other thing that has been in my mind is that Nathan said, about a year or so ago, that a pedal graphic eq can be quite nice overdriven in itself, or maybe overdriving other bits of kit. So this pedalboard may well have keyboards running through it too.

[SecretSam]

I've only tried the one graphic eq: MXR 6 band. It's great on guitar but does nothing useful for bass.

For bass, I wish I could find a pedal with two sweepable mids, a shelving treble, and a high pass filter for getting rid of <30hz.

The closest thing seems to be a Wampler equator, but it doesn't have the high pass, doesn't take batteries and costs a lot. And parts of the internet grumble that it's noisy.

Maybe have one made some day.

[Wonks]

I have an old Pearl parametric pedal with two full parametric bands on it, which does take batteries. No HPF or dedicated treble on it, though a lot of modern amps have a HPF built-in.

It does get used for time to time for fine tuning a sound.

[SecretSam]

Thanks, Wonks. That solves some of the problem.

[Murray B]

If you don't need a variable Q and have money to burn, there\s always this:

https://www.gear4music.com/Guitar-and-B ... 4*_up*MQ..

[SecretSam]

[checks forum policy on profane language ...]

Gosh, deary me. That's jolly expensive.

The Pearl parametrics seem a bit on the extravagant side these days, too.

The Orange Two Stroke does two bands of parametric-but-without-Q for about half the cost of the Tech 21. But then it has half as many controls, so I guess that's fair.

[Sam Spoons]

An analogue parametric eq is a complex beast so I'm not surprised it is expensive, many years ago I decided a parametric was the pedal I needed to get the sound I wanted out of my Les Paul but they were expensive compared to GEQs even back then so i bought a Strat instead

[Murray B]

[checks forum policy on profane language ...]

Gosh, deary me. That's jolly expensive.

- Sure is!

[Wonks]

A reasonable price to me, given the price £250-£300 price of so many ‘boutique’ drive pedals these days, with far fewer conponents.

[rockydennis]

The Orange Two Stroke does two bands of parametric-but-without-Q for about half the cost of the Tech 21. But then it has half as many controls, so I guess that's fair.

And also, Tech 21 products are made in the US whereas the Two Stroke is made in China - I'm not saying that one is inherently better than the other, but the manufacturing costs in the US are obviously much greater.

[Drew Stephenson]

Perception of value can be weird sometimes. Some of the better pedals could be just as at home as a piece of rack-mounted studio kit, and then £250 would seem quite reasonable.