KVR Audio

sweet_trip · Post by **sweet_trip** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:37 pm

hello,

i was wondering what makes a bass overdrive or distortion be more suitable for bass? the question could be answer very vaguely, like "yeah, it overdrives the lower frequencies", but is that really it? how would you go about replicating a bass overdrive or wah sound through VST or mixing or spectral enhancement, etc? on an bass overdrive pedal, is the bass tone filtered before or after the gain stage?

just curious really, i have been able to get decent distorted tones for my bass guitar, but it's always trial and error, and it's very time consuming...

rpc9943 · Post by **rpc9943** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:41 pm

actually if anyone knows some great bass overdrive free, id apprec

I end up using MDA overdrive or something and it ends up sounding a bit too "guitary" and not as "bassy"... Tried tls_saturator, thats what i usually use, but not too much overdrive going on... i own trash but I really dont like the presets, every preset on there sounds so weak... must spend more time with ti... anywwaaaays anything?

RONC

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:44 pm

Without actually knowing (never stopped me from posting before) my guess is that you filter out the low frequencies before overdriving and mix that with the original. The original might as well be filtered to only contain low frequencies.

Sit down with Synthedit one day and knock yourself out.
Who knows,you might actually learn something.

And if you do,be sure to tell me.

sweet_trip · Post by **sweet_trip** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:47 pm

hehe, well, no time for synthedit... but now that you mentioned mixing dist signals with the original, I may play around with either 1)EnergyXT and a bunch of plugins, or 2)try Bram's Cyanide2...

jupiter8 · Post by **jupiter8** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:50 pm

sweet_trip wrote:hehe, well, no time for synthedit... but now that you mentioned mixing dist signals with the original, I may play around with either 1)EnergyXT and a bunch of plugins, or 2)try Bram's Cyanide2...

That'll work too. Be sure to filter the signals with hipass and lowpass filters.

ugo · Post by **ugo** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:05 pm

sorry for the shameless plug, but if you dig sloppy and nasty overdrive/distortion on bass, check out my effect metallurgy ($20). im a bassist and i made a point of tweaking the distortions so that i could get the sort of distorted bass sounds i wanted to use, but couldnt find elsewhere.

the demo has a few presets called bassterd that might give you a starting point. as you'll see in those presets, i particularly like mixing two distortions then fine tune it with filters. (low, band and high run in parallel, with distortions on either side.) i'll also add a little fast delay stuff into it if i want something a little more 'roomy.' i will also sometimes mix the dry signal in there too.

(you can get some good funky envelope filter stuff going on with metallurgy too, if you dig that as well.)

liars&ashes · Post by **liars&ashes** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 11:19 pm

----Metallurgy would be complete overkill, in the best possible way ha-ha. But yeah, it's gotta be probably the best thing this side of CamelPhat for bass/distortion effects, and Metallurgy is way cheaper and has it's own style. Check the demos of both if you're looking to buy, otherwise, maybe grab http://www.kvraudio.com/get/537.html until you can afford something better.

Jeff

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:17 pm

I also don't know for sure, but I'll hazard a guess from how my old Boss bass overdrive sounds. It sounds like it's more of a soft clipping rather than the harsh hard-knee clipping you tend to get with normal distortions. It obviously has to create harmonics too, but it sounds like the harmonics are probably only 1st and 2nd order. There may well be filtering as well (I'd be surprised if there wasn't), as I can never get a very bright sound from my pedal even at max settings.

I've never actually run anything I've used the pedal on through an analyser to find the detail, but I generally use it on tracks where I want the bass channel to have some 100-160Hz (ish) presence or a bit above. Whatever you put through it gives that 100Hz solidness, but it emphasises the high bass area and lower mids mostly. So from that I just deduce the harmonics are 1st and 2nd order...it makes sense from the frequencies involved. Even a simple sub sinewave type sound gets beefed up around the 100Hz area, so that'd make the 1st harmonics and the next one would be the presence and twang emphasis at upto 200Hz or so.

I'm just guessing here, really. But to add to my thought processes...the type of distortion also sounds similar in character to the style of overdrive you get when you overdrive a VCA soft-knee compressor. I occasionally use my LA Audio comp precisely for that type of effect. The bass pedal is a bit grittier than the comp, but it's definitely in the same ballpark. From memory VCA comps produce similar harmonics?
And I know my comp is soft-knee.

But I'm really not sure.

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:18 pm

Oh, nearly forgot...my pedal has a bass boost too...seems to be a fairly straight forward bass Eq boost (I always assumed it was shelving). But it's possible that same bass control also has a lowpass in it.

Lagrange · Post by **Lagrange** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:39 pm

I guess it falls back to the whole analog/digital clash again.. Have yet to see something like this in the digital domain..

flanneljammies · Post by **flanneljammies** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 1:55 pm

rpc9943 wrote:actually if anyone knows some great bass overdrive free, id apprec I end up using MDA overdrive or something and it ends up sounding a bit too "guitary" and not as "bassy"... Tried tls_saturator, thats what i usually use, but not too much overdrive going on...

Actually, try Blockfish. Seriously...

cymatics · Post by **cymatics** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:13 pm

sweet_trip wrote:hello,

i was wondering what makes a bass overdrive or distortion be more suitable for bass?

Typically a guitar distortion/overdrive will have some sort of low frequency filtering before the distortion stage to minimize Intermodulation Distortion. A distortion pedal (or plugin as the case may be) created specifically for bass will usually have some sort of additional measure taken to restore filtered low frequency energy.

sweet_trip · Post by **sweet_trip** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:18 pm

that's a prety cool observation kritikon and definitely gonna check out overdriving my bass guitar with compressors or just plain clipping.

it's true thought that in recordings, the "distorted bass guitar" is kind of an illusion, because it feels distorted and you can hear the fuzz, but if you pay close attention, the fuzz is really mild, which really sounds like 'extreme soft clipping' i guess (i was listening to My Bloody Valentine last night...)

emdot_ambient · Post by **emdot_ambient** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:34 pm

I've had some good luck with http://www.kvraudio.com/get/491.html but you've got to be a bit careful with it.

Paulie Phonick · Post by **Paulie Phonick** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:35 pm

I'm surprised that TriDirt hasn't been mentioned yet - great freebie for multiband distortion experiments. Christian Budde's Christortion can sound wicked on bass as well.

what makes a 'bass overdrive' a 'bass overdrive'?