sansamp bass driver or little mark 2?

[funker]

hey, right now i'm looking to buy a key piece for my rig which right now is a peavey 115 combo and the bass is unimportant ( but its a fender p customized to the limit)
i wanted to get some nice tube sounds and i dont have alot of money.
the other day i played the little mark two and you can get great sounds with the wpf or whatever controls. i wanted to know if i could get them with the bass driver.

could somebody (preferably someone who owns both the effect and the head) help out a brother here?

[Jared Lash]

I don't own a Little Mark II, but I've played around with all the Markbass stuff extensively at my local shop. In my opinion, these two products are going to give you very different results. The Little Mark II is warm, clear and punchy, and while it can get a somewhat vintage sound with the VLE, it is much more of a presence/tone knob than a tube sound.

The SansAmp is a tube emulator and it can do a very convincing job of making most rigs sound pretty close to an SVT.

I imagine that the two COULD cover the same ground (crank the VLE on the Little Mark and turn down the presence and gain and up the bass on the BDDI) but really they do different things.

Honestly, each one's strength is the other one's weakness. The Little Mark is clear and transparent but doesn't really do growly or tubey and the SansAmp does great tubey grit but really colors your tone.

[JimmyM]

LMII. Not a fan of the Bass Driver. Love the VT, but the Bass Driver didn't impress me with its "tube" tones. Yeah, the LMII is clean, but it's the most tubey sounding SS or hybrid on the market.

[oli@bass]

Any MarkBass amp plus any of the SansAmp products for bass. I'd probably get the Programmable Bass Driver DI for starters. Or, if you put the LittleMark in a rack, get the RBI or RPM and use it in the effects loop of the LM.

You'll finde some very interesting threads covering the SansAmp products in this forum!

[runmikeyrun]

honestly, i think that the sansamp bass driver sounds like a SS amp with an overloaded input! Hardly any sort of distortion at all. If you want fuzz get something else.

[dgelting]

Originally Posted by runmikeyrun

honestly, i think that the sansamp bass driver sounds like a SS amp with an overloaded input! Hardly any sort of distortion at all. If you want fuzz get something else.

I find that I can get much more distortion out of the Sansamp if I push the front end of it hard. I often use a volume boost of any sort before it to get real distortion. Maybe my and your basses just have low output.

[tomvelsor]

i own both..

theyre two opposite things, so owning both would be really versatile. the sansamp is tube world, but the LMII is as clean as it gets..

if your tight on cash the sansamp is a lot cheaper, but id get the markbass if it was possible.

[Qvist]

Get the behringer BDi21, only 30$ and it sounds exactly like the Sansamp BDDI That's if you want to use it just as a pedal! I'm convinced my bdi21 won't last forever, behringer is a **** company, but this pedal really rocks equally as much as the BDDI! and for 30 $, you can't go wrong with it

[SpankyPants]

Originally Posted by Qvist

Get the behringer BDi21, only 30$ and it sounds exactly like the Sansamp BDDI

No it doesn't.

There was a thread with a blind comparison between the two. Check it out.

[Sifl]

I use both. I use the Sansamp to add a little grit to the amp. I use the amp to boost the mids, since the BDDI doesn't have a dedicated mid control. I'm happy with my tone.

[Qvist]

Originally Posted by SpankyPants

No it doesn't.

There was a thread with a blind comparison between the two. Check it out.

I did, c'mon man you can hardly tell the difference! and for the price!

I should not have used the word "exactly", but it is pretty damn close. And I actually thought the behringer sounded better in the first clip, so that's probably also why I bought it

[Rickett Customs]

Originally Posted by runmikeyrun

honestly, i think that the sansamp bass driver sounds like a SS amp with an overloaded input! Hardly any sort of distortion at all. If you want fuzz get something else.

That is because it's not advertised/marketed as a "distortion or fuzz pedal", thus the name "driver".

[locolobo85]

The Bass Driver is the most versatile piece of equipment in limited collection of bass equipment. It's the one constant in my setup.

[SpankyPants]

Originally Posted by Qvist

I did, c'mon man you can hardly tell the difference! and for the price!

I should not have used the word "exactly", but it is pretty damn close. And I actually thought the behringer sounded better in the first clip, so that's probably also why I bought it

So there was enough difference for you to notice.

[Qvist]

Originally Posted by SpankyPants

So there was enough difference for you to notice.

Well, yes but I would have been just as happy with the BDDI as the BDi21, sound-wise.