Alesis BassFX

This is not a very intuitive unit, and the manual doesn't do a very good job of explaining the basic concept. After about an hour of fiddling with the unit and reading the manual, the light bulb went off and it finally made sense. Even so, setting up programs is a tedious process.

I used this unit with a Dean Jeff Berlin bass and a G-K amp. I used a Kurzweil controller pedal to experiment with the effects that can be controlled with a pedal via the controller jack.

This unit is simpy awful. It does not have a true bypass, so even in bypass mode it made my bass sound lifeless and sterile, so adding any effect at all makes a bad situation worse. The distortion presets are bad and the gain/EQ parameters don't offer enough flexibility to make them better. The distortion is also not linear. If you play soft the sound remains clean, then once a certain threshold is reached the sound breaks up into erratic, ugly digital distortion until you play hard enough to get beyond that and into consistent distortion. Most of the effects that utilize the controller pedal didn't offer a wide range of variability. The auto-wahs aren't very good, and the pedal wahs were beyond useless. Some of the chorus effects might be okay if the overall sound wasn't so lifeless. Some of the pitch and octave effects might have some novelty value, but in the real world they would have little useful application. Many are simply worthless and do nothing but make the sound worse.

I got rid of it the day after I got it, so who knows how long it would last in the real world.

Their website is generally useful but I've never had to deal with Alesis directly.

I play punk, metal, classic rock, blues, whatever. I've been playing for 25 years and have had a wide variety of very good and very bad equipment. I would not use the Alesis Bass FX even if someone gave one to me for free. The store that I bought it from (Apple Music in Portland, Oregon) had a no refund policy (bastards), but thankfully I was able to take it to another store and was more than happy to trade it straight across for an Ibanez PD7 bass distortion. Even though the Ibanez is a single effect, it is infinitely more useful than the Alesis.

I like most Alesis products, so I was really dismayed that they would offer such a worthless product. This is just a gimmicky toy for young kids to play with that don't know any better, and they are the ones that can least afford to throw away money on junk like this.

Is it easy to use? Compared to other multi-effects units I've tried and own, yes. The manual is marginally useful, but like anything else, takes some time to become familiar with.

Was not impressed that a brick AC adaptor did not come with the unit, but I found a suitable one cheap online. No on/off switch, which I hate.

I've tried this thing with my own Rogue 5 string active bass (yeah,I know, but it is actually a decent instrument, and I am primarily a guitarist), and a friend has tried his Fender Precision Bass through it. Didn't matter. Still sounds like crap.

I use my gear in my home studio only (don't gig). My sounds go through a Presonus Firepod and back out through a vintage stereo amp and monitors. I am pretty familiar with these kinds of units, having owned a couple of Digitechs, and now have a Boss GT-6 and GT-8. These I have learned to tweak to get awesome sounds. Just cannot find anything in the BassFX at all worth bothering with. Every time I've sat down with this thing I got disgusted and put it aside again.

Many patches sound the same. It is very noisy. I've tried diddling the parameters, but there just isn't a whole lot of variation in the sound. After three months going back and forth with it, I'm ditching it. I'll just keep using my GT-6 for the time being, which although is not a bass processor, works well enough with a bass.

This is just a big piece of plastic with electronics inside. I think that if I dropped it I would kill it. Switches seem to be very frail and flimsy. More like a toy than anything else. Mind you, that wasn't that big a deal for me, as this thing lives in my studio and my gear is well-cared for. However, I would never consider gigging with it.

I've never had to deal with Alesis support, so cannot comment.

I am primarily a guitarist, and mess around with bass to lay down tracks from time to time for my home recordings. Was looking for an inexpensive bass effects unit to experiment with. Buying this was a mistake. It wasn't expensive and that by itself should have been enough for me to keep looking. Couldn't find any reviews on it, so decided to take a chance. This is the only piece of gear I've ever regretted buying. Doubt I can even get rid of it on ebay for $20.

I own other Alesis gear, and am pretty satisfied with it, but this thing is a big disappointment.

Been playing about 6 years, all styles except jazz. Currently have 9 guitars, a mandolin, a lap steel, the afore-mentioned bass, and a big rack full of processors and effects.

If it were lost or stolen, I would be grateful.

I could live with this thing if I could just get decent sounds with it, but just can't make it happen. The old adage of you get what you pay for has never been more true.

I was wondering why no one ever posted a review of this unit, and I guess I'm the only idiot stupid enough to buy one. I was actually ashamed to admit that I did throw money away on this, but figured I might save another soul the pain of trying to make righteous sounds with this box by posting this. Keep looking folks, nothing here worthy of your hard-earned money.