Which bass rigs are capable of a nice saturated tone

WiresDreamDisasters

Not asking for much huh?!

Doesn't have to be hardware. Could be software. Which bass rigs are capable of a nice saturated tone without screwing up the lows and without going too brittle in the highs?

I've got the Helix of course. Also have the Darkglass B7K/Vintage Ultra plugins. I also have The Ampeg SVTVR Classic on my UAD Apollo.

I guess best thing would be to have a parallel chain and have a distortion doing the heavy lifting when it comes to saturation and use the amp as a pure clean platform - in digital or analog ... ???

JonHosker

Basic answer but Kemper preloaded bass amps are great sounding. Jon

Bridgehouse

Have you tried a preamp pedal with a valve in it?

ICBM

Behringer Super Fuzz pedal into anything .

WiresDreamDisasters

JonHosker said:

Basic answer but Kemper preloaded bass amps are great sounding. Jon

Yeah they're not too bad. I bought a Darkglass pedal on the strength of some a few years ago.

Bridgehouse said:

Have you tried a preamp pedal with a valve in it?

Not yet no. I don't have much knocking around at the moment in terms of drivey pedals. Just the Fallout Cloud, which does sound mega on bass actually.

Bridgehouse

WiresDreamDisasters said:

JonHosker said:

Basic answer but Kemper preloaded bass amps are great sounding. Jon

Yeah they're not too bad. I bought a Darkglass pedal on the strength of some a few years ago.

Bridgehouse said:

Have you tried a preamp pedal with a valve in it?

Not yet no. I don't have much knocking around at the moment in terms of drivey pedals. Just the Fallout Cloud, which does sound mega on bass actually.

Rather than a drive, try a preamp. 

I have a dave hall preamp with a boost and a valve in it which gives super saturation. Don’t make em anymore but you’re welcome to borrow mine to try the theory if you want.

fretmeister

Darkglass M900 head.

It's bloody fantastic.

There is also the DG AO Head, but I don't like that one. It's actually more filthy but it's not tight or defined enough for me.

The preamp in the M900 is based on the B3K V2 but tweaked for the amp itself.
I've got a Mk1 and I'm really close to splooging on a Mk2 as well.

If you want a pedal - then the EBS "Billy Sheehan Ultimate" will do super saturated and defined. It's not just a Billy type drive, it's a lot more versatile than that. It's very differently voiced to DG stuff.


If you want cheap. Boss LS-2 pedal + EHX Metal Muff in 1 loop and a good compressor in the other to match the compression of the driven side so the clean and dirty notes die at the same rate.

WiresDreamDisasters

This is the UAD Ampeg B15N which I've absolutely cranked the tits out of. This is the sort of thing I mean.

https://soundcloud.com/drewb2015/ampeg-b15n-test

Here is the preset:

fretmeister

The DG head will do that.

Using the VMT option on the drive. So I'm assuming the VMTD pedal wouldn't have any trouble

Musicwolf

When I'm recording I usually plug into my Kemper (I quite like the Ampeg profiles for bass) and take the distorted profiled and clean DI sounds to two tracks in the DAW.  I'll roll off some of the lows on the profiled sound and some of the high on the DI sound.  I usually compress the DI sound more than the profiled one then balance to taste.

Funkfingers

Tech21 Geddy Lee 2112 rack or YYZ pedal. Their dug Pinnick pedal looks interesting too.

fretmeister

I had the dUg pedal.

It was very good but a bit of a 1 trick pony for me. It also seemed very sensitive to string choice - with my preferred D'addario's there was a high overtone I didn't like

WiresDreamDisasters

Okay... this might be a game-changer for me....

@fretmeister

https://neuraldsp.com/products/parallax/

UnclePsychosis

Itsd been a while since I've plugged my bass in but from memory the Catalinbread SFT will do that sort of thing quite well.