Electro-Harmonix Bass9 Bass Machine Pedal Reviews

The bass 9 has many different bass effects that I can apply to a variety of songs. It performs well through a combo amp, but not so much through a bass amp. The overall volume and performance quality loses in the bass amp but not on a combo Otherwise the variety of effects are impressive. The fretless muting the strings actually is one of my favorites. Also the ability to chord with it is a plus.

Iam an old rocker, melodic hard rock/ metal with arthritis. it's painful to play bass guitar on my recordings. so this works great running guitar through it. the P bass sounds very real, and the Taurus pedal sound is a lot like my old non working Taurus pedals. the other bass sounds, like the bowed cello is nice too. so the 27 songs that need bass right now will be much easer to finish. if you need bass guitar sounds as well as other bass instrument sounds, this is a great way to go. and it is a much cheaper solution to an expensive bass guitar. BTW the EH Canyon pedal is real nice on guitar as well. ROCK ON.

I don't know why anyone couldn't dial in a satisfying bass tone with this pedal. Just tweak it a bit and you'll find a sound you'll like. I do like to use the Precision Bass settings utilizing the neck pickup on a Strat. Sounds really great for looping. I've included a demo of me doing a jam through a Fender GTX100.

Unlike the POG2, which is pretty good overall, this pedal blows it away in terms of accuracy of tracking and tonality. Don't quite know how they did it, but EHX did. Has some bells and whistles that you'll likely never use, sure, but what else is new? Seems to be all the rage with current pedals. Ugh. Anyway, if you want fairly realistic bass sounds, particularly the Precision, that can genuinely be integrated into your sound. this pedal delivers. Also quite a bit less expensive than the POG2.

I play in a small group and having the Electro-Harmonix Bass9 Bass Machine Pedal allows me to play back up rhythm guitar (alternating bass finger picking) through a regular amp while splitting out the bass notes, dropping them down an octave and playing them through a separate bass amp. This effectively allows me to play rhythm guitar and bass at the same time. There are of course a great many other innovative and versatile possibilities for using the e-h Bass9 in a playing mix. The Bass9 is an incredible little piece of equipment. Well done e-h!

I buy them and I get rid of them till I found this one.. this is a good age to be alive.. this pedal does exactly what I need it for.. click it and your guitar is a bass and it's that simple.. I don't even own a bass anymore though I miss all of them.. I only have two single pedals now this one and the canyon one.. I went this route for space but if you want a pedal that transforms your signal to bass, then you really don't need to look anywhere else.. you won't be disappointed.. in fact, you'll wish you'd have done it sooner.. good heavy duty materials.. lots of settings to find your pocket for which to get your groove on and fast or slow?; this baby will keep up with you as it tracks you like a jealous girlfriend.. comes with quality power supply but then this company EH?; they only do quality stuff so you can't go wrong and it's virtually a noise free unit which is another reason I use Electro-Harmonix .. also, there's no learning curve if any as you just turn it on play around till you find your sound and leave it there.. if this ever wears out, I will just get another one.. this unit is a keeper.. just do it and Sweetwater has your back all the way from the order to you using it so even don't worry bout it..

Pedal I have been waiting for in a long time, fit's my music to a tee ,don't have to change guitars, just hit a switch, thanks to James for professional service.

I'm a guitarist, not a bassist. I got tired of tripping over bass guitars and, well, just looking at them sitting around most of the time doing nothing when I wasn't recording. Previously I had been using an EHX Nano POG which into Amplitube bass rigs which was pretty good for recording. Then I saw this. Somehow I thought I missed it but it turns out it's relatively new as of late 2020 and this review. Anyway, this pedal is incredible. The PBass sounds are pretty much where I stopped because I didn't need to hear anymore... seriously. Between the tone control on the pedal for the PBass setting, pickup selector on guitar, and varieties of bass rigs at my disposal in Amplitube(now on 5), I can dial in absolutely *any* realistic bass sound that I need for recording. It's absolutely incredible for recording if you don't want to play an actual bass. Sure, I could keep a cheap bass around just for recording but again, it's taking up space, and I can more consistently play a bass line for a recording on my guitar vs an actual bass. Besides, there are far, far more tonal options for recording in this pedal when you consider all the settings vs a bass. For me it's that simple and the primary motivator for wanting to own this pedal.

TIP: The pickup selector on your guitar makes a *huge* impact on sound. If I run my Strat single coil bridge pickup(Strat has American Pro Tim Shaw pups) it wants to sound much more like a Jazz Bass than a P. Flip to the middle single coil though and it's incredible. Some of the in-between positions even sound great with the flexibility of the tone control for the PBass setting on the pedal. I tried my LP but I get better sounds for me out of my Strat. So, point being that guitar and pickup selection have a *big* impact on sound just as the manual suggests.

I rely heavily on pitch shifting effects. I already have the pitchfork from EHX, and it's an incredible shifter. With an expression pedal it blows the whammy pedal from digitech out of the water. Its only shortcoming is latency when the effect is fully engaged. The latency when shifting a full octave down with no dry signal mixed in is unworkable. Enter the Bass 9. While this pedal is advertised as a bass modeler, it's really just a fancy octaver.

The entire design is about shifting down an octave with zero latency, and it does this flawlessly. This is exactly what I needed and this pedal does that and much more. The 9 different models are all cool, although the P-bass model really shines. I put this pedal first in my signal chain, and it plays really nicely with my analogman mini compROSSor and my Keeley Neutrino envelop filter.

With a comp and a filter in the chain, you can get all the classic bass sounds with this. Of course if you turn up the dry mix you get unparalleled octaver sounds that sound way better than, say, the POG. Combined with the pitchfork and Mission EP-1, I now have total control over pitch shifting. I love modern technology that has made things like the whammy bar obsolete. Pardon the messy pedalboard. I'm not using any velcro or zip ties until I'm 100% settled on the signal chain, and more adjustments will probably be made.

I love this little Bass box, I run Fender Redondo and an old 80's Hamer/Slammer trough this thing and into a Boss ME70, then through the Beat Buddy that has the stomp pedal and an external controller.. all of that then goes through a mixer and finally into a pair of Yamaha DBR15's.. the sound is clear and perfect.. what ever you put in, will come back out including full crystal clear chords and it tracks right now without hesitation or delay or any loss of reproduction from your instrument.. it has perfect timing as every slight pick or pluck or slap comes thumping out just as concise as a hard phrased attack whether with one note or full on chord shape and no matter where you are on the finger board.. so if your looking to turn your guitar into a bass, this little Bass box gives you a bunch of sounds that your actual bass could never produce.. and besides; it's way easier for your left hand to reach.. lol.. shipping was like surprisingly fast and Sweetwater service is beyond explanation; they know what it takes to retain loyalty.. they did not pay me to write this and I'm just telling this like it is.. so.. but the pedal really is more than just a Bass box; it's a sound machine that will add a ton of depth and tone to your strumming and leads alike.. just get it and quit doubting.. for once you'll feel real good about your choices in life.. lol..

Excellent pre and post order attention. Thank to everyone in Sweetwater.

I bought the Bass9 for simulating bass in my looping setup. I've tried others like the Boss OC3 (or 5, not sure), as well as the G2B effect on my Boss RC-600 looper, and neither of those two were especially stable. There are too many tracking errors, for lack of a better term, with those units. The EH Bass9 tracks accurately, and sounds like a bass. The other option I have for this effect is the Bass Amp setting on my TC Helicon VoiceLive 3 Extreme. It too tracks very well and sounds like a bass. But I needed something that was a dedicated effect that I could easily turn off and on with one press of a switch, without having to tap a couple of buttons to get to it like I would with the TCH VL3X. So the EH Bass9 is a winner for that reason.

I first learned of this pedal about 2 years ago, but I was pretty skeptical that it would track properly and actually sound like a bass guitar (or at least in that ballpark). I've experimented with synth pedals (Source Audio C4 and BOSS SY-1) that have octave-down effects. I've also looked at the BOSS OC-5. But this is the best plug-and-play option I've come across, albeit for a somewhat niche purpose, which is recording bass lines for looping or simple demos WITHOUT having to switch out to another instrument. It's not going to "feel" like playing a bass, but with a little bit of trial-and-error with your technique, it will sound (mostly) like one. At least enough to satisfy a non-bass player which, frankly, is the intended purpose of the Bass9. I docked off a half-star because a few of the models are little noisy (but should clean up with noise gate), and some of the models (303, Flip-Flop) aren't the greatest. But between the P-Bass and the Virtual settings, you can come up with a wide variety of electric bass sounds. Also, the note tracking is probably better than I expected, especially once you spend some time with it and adjust your playing a bit.

Not what i was hoping for. I ran it on a side chain with some compression and into a bass di/and or amp/pa. just couldn't get the tone i desire out of bass.

I wanted something to allow me to stop alternating between my guitar and my electric bass. This seemed like a good solution, but the sound is not convincing. Too much dry signal gets through, the effects are not realistic, and the cost is way too high for something that doesn't work very well. It's going on the shelf and I'm back to switching instruments.

DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY. I purchased this product about a year ago and have had several problems with it. The signal would drop in and out and recently it has quit working entirely. It feels like it's made of cheap plastic.

I requested a refund and was denied. So I basically spent $ on a plastic box that does nothing. Like I said, it's a piece of junk. I'm off to buy a Boss Octave pedal as soon as I get the money.

After combing thru many forums, and showing this to other players, I've fully verified what I'm about to explain...
This pedal allows you to use your guitar to play bass. In a live setting you not want to play pass thru your guitar amp and would instead route the bass signal to a bass amp or PA. This pedal has two outputs - Dry and Effect. One would think that you'd be able to use two separate amps as I just described. Unfortunately EH made a huge mistake. The Dry output is purely the dry guitar signal and the Effect output is the bass signal with the ability to mix in dry signal. Sounds good so far, but here's the problem - the two outputs are always on thus producing two signals (hitting two amps simultaneously in the setup I described earlier). So if you want to just play bass thru a bass amp, you can't. Your bass signal will indeed go out on the Effects output to the bass amp, but it's also sending the guitar signal out on the Dry output. So unless you control the guitar signal yourself (turn off the guitar amp, use an AB box or volume pedal, etc) you're stuck with your guitar doubling your bass playing. Worse yet, if you disengage the pedal so you can go back to playing just guitar, the Effect output now becomes a second dry signal output - even with the Mix knob at 0. So your guitar signal goes out on Dry to your guitar amp, but simultaneously that same dry signal goes out on the Effects output (where your bass signal would be if the pedal were engaged). That's right, you now have a dry guitar signal going to the bass amp, or PA. It's incomprehensible, but that's what it does and you can't stop it other than to (once again) turn off the bass amp, use an AB box, volume pedal, etc. But this stupidly designed Bass9 has no ability to do the very obvious signal routing itself. Why on earth would you want the dry guitar signal going out on the Dry AND the Effect output while the pedal is DISENGAGED. If EH wants a lesson on how this should work, refer to the Digitech Trio where the guitar goes out on one output and the bass/drums go out on another. And if there's only one output in use, all signals go out on it. Simple, effective, useful - unlike this pedal from EH. Skip this item and wait for someone to do it the right way.