Joker Verox

Science_Woman says:

There are a couple of things that you need to take into consideration when picking effects. The first is obviously price, and the second is the sort of bass you are using.
My personal experience has shown that if you use an active bass, normal guitar distortion pedals tend to ‘over-distort’ and compress your sound too much causing you to lose a lot of output level (volume). This is not the case with all guitar pedals but with a lot of them.
You are right in thinking that the most common effects for bass are usually distortion/overdrive, chorus and wah/auto-wah effects.
On the distortion front, i can recommend a few different pedals. The Tech 21 Sansamp Bass Driver (www.tech21nyc.com) is probably the most popular bass distortion going around and it emulates a distorted tube amp when it’s cranked right up. That would be my #1 choice. It is fairly expensive compared to other pedals but you definately get what you pay for. Another option would be the Boss OBD3 Bass Overdrive (www.bossus.com), which can sound fairly nasty but in a lot of situations that’s a good thing. The Boss is also significantly cheaper than the Sansamp. If you decide to buy a Big Muff pedal (www.ehx.com), buy the Russian model and not the US made one. General consensis on the Big Muff is that the Russian one is voiced better for bass while the US one is favoured by guitarists.
On the Chorus front, the main 2 choices would be the Boss Bass Chorus and the EBS UniChorus (www.ebs.bass.se). Both are reasonable inexpensive and give great sounds.
In regards to a wah you can’t go past the Dunlop Bass Crybaby (www.jimdunlop.com). It’s the big white wah pedal that you can see in most music shops and it sounds great. There are other specific bass wahs on the market but most people end up going back to the Crybaby.
One more effect that is becoming more common amoungst bass players is the Octaver. This takes your note and adds a second note an octave lower giving you really fat sound. Boss and EBS both make notable octave effects.
Behringer (www.behringer.com) is now making a lot of really cheap effects. These might be worth checking out if you want to try out different effects but don’t want to shell out big bucks for other pedals.
Another option that is open to you is the idea of going for a Multi-FX unit. A good choice would be the Boss ME50B. You get a lot of different FX and it is controlled by knobs rather than big digital menus. It would allow you to have a play with a bigger range of sounds and then discover for yourself what works for you and your music. Once you know what sort of sounds you like, you can then think about upgrading to better quality single FX pedals.
There are so many pedals on the market. Other brands worth having a look at are Line 6 (www.line6.com), Digitech (www.digitech.com) and Rocktron (www.rocktron.com). There are many more but I can’t think of them right now.
Take your bass into your local music store and have a play with a few different units. It’s fun.
References :
My boyfriend – experienced bass player with extensive effects knowlege & teaches at University of Tasmania.
http://www.bossus.com
http://www.ebs.bass.se
http://www.jimdunlop.com
http://www.tech21nyc.com
http://www.ehx.com
http://www.behringer.com
http://www.line6.com
http://www.rocktron.com
http://www.digitech.com