Is it just me, or Behringer Bass V-amp sucks?

[Moonsoft]

I have had my bass v-amp for 1 year now, I didn't want to sell my house to buy a good preamp, I was still getting into bass.
I heard this thing has various good cabinet reproductions like Gallien Krueger Trace Elliot etc. so I bought it.
At the time I didn't have a good bass ear, which evolves every 2 weeks following my statistics, and I thought that was the normal sound a bass should have.
But I never played with fingers because it just gets all...restrained or something, in a way that you can't tell the tablature if I play too fast. And the rest of the instruments added are all absorved by it, like they are swimming in that sticky pool of noise. So I played with a pick all the time. But then the clapping sound seemed too accentuated, and if it has reverb, you hear the bassline and a claping sound following it, and not at the same time, not the great sound I was expecting. When I'm playing a song from an artist at the same time as I hear the song I get 7 out of 10 goodness with fingers, but if I record it, it sounds like pure trash.
I dunno if it's because I'm pluggin' it into my sound card where the usual microphone used to talk in MSN is supposed to be, or if the quality of this thing really sucks, it usually doesn't come out as we hear when we play.
I bought a ESI MAYA 44 to record bass sound at 24-bit 96/192kHz to see if it records better than this common sound card.
Now I supposed to buy a Hartke 3500A for 450 euros, and try something serious for the first time. I don't go Ampeg because I don't have that kind of money, so I go for a Hartke as my inspiration bassist used to play. 10 EQ should give me enough power to customize every detail.

I'm just scared that it will all sound just as bad.

Could it be a bass problem? I have an ESP F-104 with Earnie Ball strings 045-100. And I have changed the distance of the strings because it used to hit on the fretboard causing a very disturbing sound. The strings have diferent distances, which makes some strings come out with a higher volume than others, but I corrected that, they are just too distant and bothers my fingers to play. Does this distance cause any sound distortion?

[Scott in Dallas]

Is the cabinet emulation on? That could be the reason it sounds different. Try making sure the output mode is set to Studio 1, which gives you stereo operation through the two outputs and only what you select. You can then experiment disabling the drive and emulations to see if you can get a sound you like.

I have a regular V-amp and I use it for both bass and guitar. You might try using a line in instead of a microphone in and turn the master down on the unit to see if that cleans it up as well. If you can use the headphone jack on the computer instead of on the unit it will help you to know what's coming in.

In my experience, too many effects and too much tweaking just deadens your ears from fatigue after a while. I try to start out disabling as much as I can to get the basic instrument sound and only add things sparingly and one at a time.

[Zinkff]

I have a Bass Vamp Pro and it works fine for recording. It requires a lot of tweaking to get a good sound though. The factory presets aren't good. Some work with the eq section, and getting the gains right (there is an input 'pad' that needs to be adjusted to avoid nasty distortion) and it works fine. Also, don't use the mic input on your soundcard, it will be very distorted.

[Scott in Dallas]

Originally Posted by Zinkff

It requires a lot of tweaking to get a good sound though. The factory presets aren't good.

+1

[DJ1]

Most of the presets are a bit noisy. Tweak and it's fixed. The amp speaker sim is pretty good but the effect leave a lot to be desired.

A good addition to any rig though.