Darkglass Vintage Deluxe V3 has too much string/fret noise

[BassBrass]

Hmm, I wonder what the Venn diagram of people who bash DG for having a specific sound and being expensive, and people who swear by the SansAmp BDDI looks like... I'm guessing it's as close to a perfect circle as you can get.

Well I wouldn't be in that circle. When I abandoned the BDDI everything got better. It was good for the bedroom sound and lousy live in a band. I did enjoy using the original VT bass pedal for a few years, you can get increased and changeable mid freq out of it via the character knob and the mids knob.
I would also think that product hype is pretty normal and to be expected, and it's normal to be circumspect about it until tested in the real world (like the requirement to use a Fender or any particular bass or automobile brand), and 15 years is pretty damn recent, post 2000, far more recent than Black Sabbath. I also called avoiding the hype an illusion of my imagination...maybe I wasn't clear enough for you on that. So the description of condensation on my part is false, and would suggest that it reflects a sensitivity you have, a "button pushing" issue. The ole one finger pointing means 3 fingers pointing back. Are you actually angry at me for questioning the value of DG? I did say, "I'm sure many are good people". That's a joke quoting fearless leader in 2016, nine years ago, ancient history.

 

[kcducttaper]

Hmm, I wonder what the Venn diagram of people who bash DG for having a specific sound and being expensive, and people who swear by the SansAmp BDDI looks like... I'm guessing it's as close to a perfect circle as you can get.

I had a SansAmp BDDI and didn't like it. I also had a VT Bass Deluxe and didn't like it.

I have a DG B7k Ultra and DG Microtubes X7 that I really love for very specific purposes!

I also have a DG Vintage Deluxe V3 that I almost, but don't quite like and a DG Harmonic Booster that is "fine" I guess, but isn't really a "forever pedal". I had 2 DG Hyper Luminals (got a replacement because I honestly thought the first one was broken) and didn't like them.

Do with that as you wish, but I'm apparently very picky when it comes to OD and compressor tones regardless of brand affiliation.

 

[FaithNoMan]

If you watch a bunch of their videos, yes, you get the idea that they only do clanky, mid scooped, aggressive tones. And yes, they cost a bunch of money.

My experience: to avoid paying a lot for overdrives, I bought a cheaper overdrive. Not quite my thing. So I bought another, and another..... After a few years of this, I put a bunch of my overdrives up for sale this year. Even though I lost money on every sale, I had more than enough from the sale of those cheap overdrives to buy a B7K, a Deluxe Vintage, a Tech 21 YYZ, and a few other good pedals. Yes, Darkglass stuff costs more, but it costs a lot less than chasing the tone in your head with cheaper pedals.

The B7K and Deluxe vintage (I suggest you need to go to the deluxe level with Darkglass) have a LOT of options in terms of what feeds and comes back from the distortion engine. There are myriad ways to reduce the amount of fret noise:

Lower the drive into the distortion engine.

Lower the signal after the distortion engine

Blend more towards the clean side

Change the eq going into the distortion engine (one of the 3 way switches)

Change the eq coming out of the distortion engine (the other 3 way switch)

The 4 band eq - you have options for the high mid operating frequency in addition to just adjusting the knobs.

The sounds in my head have nothing to do with what you hear on Darkglass demos (not nearly as distorted or clanky), yet they are easily dialed up on a B7K or my Vintage Deluxe - it takes a while to understand what everything does, but once you do, they are very usable and flexible devices.

Definitely one of the all time great "mainstream" overdrives I've had. And I only had the little brother the VMT(I had a Ultra for a few days but back then didn't know how to use it and it was "too dark" for me, lol)

I usually love bright and clanky, but the VMT has more amplike warmth than many of their other drives.

And I can easily cover Sublime with it. No way that pedal is "too clanky"

 

[sunbeast]

The general statement that "all DG pedals sound scooped and clanky" is pretty ignorant. Many of them CAN do that very well, but I can also dial in some very nice OD and lighter gain sounds from my B7k and X7 perfectly fine.

Normally, I like a boost in the ~2kHz region (via preamp pedal) just with my baseline tone and don't hear a bunch of intrusive string/fret noise with my baseline tone. I can try dialing down some of the high mids a bit, but I'd done that before and it lost a lot of definition.

I just saw this- the built-in shape of the Vintage drive channel already has a mid hump centered just around 2K that can't really be dialed out without the EQ or the Blend knob. I suspect you are inadvertently stacking boost by running the Vintage drive into a preamp with that range already boosted. That is one benefit of the Era control on the earlier models, was that at lower levels it seemed to shift the mid presence downward nicely- I rarely if ever used my Vintage w/ Era control with the Era on all the way (which is how it is apparently "hard-wired" in the versions without the Era, which makes it a bit closer sounding to a B7K to me) as I preferred the chunkier tones with Era turned down (and it still wasn't dark to my ears).

Here's a useful page that shows some frequency response graphs of both the Vintage Ultra (which should match your Deluxe v3 and B7K (most useful would be to look at the Grunt and Attack response graphs near the bottom which show the drive channel isolated so you can see the built-in EQ curve): Darkglass Ultra Plugins vs Hardware

 

[kcducttaper]

I just ordered a Source Audio Aftershock as a replacement for the Vintage. I think I would have been happier with the older Vintage, but I really liked the versatility of the SA and how it seemed to have little effect on the fundamental bass tone while adding several different types of overdrive, distortion, fuzz, etc, so I figured I'd give that a go.

I just saw this- the built-in shape of the Vintage drive channel already has a mid hump centered just around 2K that can't really be dialed out without the EQ or the Blend knob. I suspect you are inadvertently stacking boost by running the Vintage drive into a preamp with that range already boosted. That is one benefit of the Era control on the earlier models, was that at lower levels it seemed to shift the mid presence downward nicely- I rarely if ever used my Vintage w/ Era control with the Era on all the way (which is how it is apparently "hard-wired" in the versions without the Era, which makes it a bit closer sounding to a B7K to me) as I preferred the chunkier tones with Era turned down (and it still wasn't dark to my ears).

Here's a useful page that shows some frequency response graphs of both the Vintage Ultra (which should match your Deluxe v3 and B7K (most useful would be to look at the Grunt and Attack response graphs near the bottom which show the drive channel isolated so you can see the built-in EQ curve): Darkglass Ultra Plugins vs Hardware

What a find! Yeah, it does have a decent hump around 2k, but so the the B7K as well if I'm reading it correctly.

 

[sunbeast]

I just ordered a Source Audio Aftershock as a replacement for the Vintage. I think I would have been happier with the older Vintage, but I really liked the versatility of the SA and how it seemed to have little effect on the fundamental bass tone while adding several different types of overdrive, distortion, fuzz, etc, so I figured I'd give that a go.


What a find! Yeah, it does have a decent hump around 2k, but so the the B7K as well if I'm reading it correctly.

Yes both the B7K and Vintage are based around the same fundamental drive circuit, just with a number of component values adjusted to change the shaping of the signal going into the clipping part of the circuit with the B7K having significantly wider mid cuts happening as a result. That becomes much more obvious with the later Vintage iterations like yours where they added the Attack/Grunt switches back into the circuit and axed the Era control- as someone who used the original Vintage from release then picked up an Ultra years later it felt like the Ultra was a sort-of hybrid of a B7K and the vintage I knew and loved. Sometime I will have to do a frequency plot test of the original Vintage with Era as I have never seen one posted

 

[wolffire99]

I use the Darkglass Vintage V1 all the time. Never had this issue.

The original and deluxe VMT’s are very different sounding pedals

 

[SpiderBass1965]

The original and deluxe VMT’s are very different sounding pedals

I let my post sit too long for changes. I meant Vintage Deluxe V1. And it is far from clanky sounding.

 

[sunbeast]

I let my post sit too long for changes. I meant Vintage Deluxe V1. And it is far from clanky sounding.

The v1 Vintage Deluxe still had the “Era” control and so is basically a standard Vintage with added EQ. Later versions of the Deluxe and all the Ultras had the Era essentially hardwired at maximum and with the added Attack and Grunt switches. I can verify that I found it impossible to get the tones from my regular Vintage from my Vintage Ultra, though I personally didn’t find it “too clanky” for my tastes. I think the OP’s issue is that he is already boosting 2khz on his preamp while the Vintage Deluxe v3 also boosts that high-mid range. He probably needs a more neutral overdrive pedal.

The Vintage Deluxe v1 is probably my favorite of all the Vintage iterations because it still has that Era control and the added EQ bands on top

 

[SpiderBass1965]

You are probably right about the OP boosting the higher frequency on his preamp. And yes, the Vintage Deluxe v1 is great with the Era control.

 

[kcducttaper]

You are probably right about the OP boosting the higher frequency on his preamp. And yes, the Vintage Deluxe v1 is great with the Era control.

Covered this several times, but none of my other pedals behave the same way. Similarly, I've dialed my highs down and it doesn't really help as much as it should. I ordered a Source Audio Aftershock to replace it.

 

[sunbeast]

Covered this several times, but none of my other pedals behave the same way. Similarly, I've dialed my highs down and it doesn't really help as much as it should. I ordered a Source Audio Aftershock to replace it.

Highs on the Darkglass pedals are at 5K, which IMO is too high to really be where fret noise is (unless you are playing through a very out of balance tweeter in your speaker cabinet) and the drive channel already rolls off highs significantly before 5K anyway. That hump at 2-3k would be my first guess given that’s also where you are boosting on your preamp, which I would cut with the high-mid control at either 1.5K or 3k. If you have a DAW on your computer you can record a particularly noisy bass line then look at it through a frequency spectrum analyser on playback to find where there are clear peaks happening during the noise.

That said, if it isn’t floating your boat there are tons of other options. I personally never found much I liked in the Aftershock or any other digital distortion, but certainly many folks like that pedal and it definitely has a lot of tweakability.

 

[kcducttaper]

That said, if it isn’t floating your boat there are tons of other options. I personally never found much I liked in the Aftershock or any other digital distortion, but certainly many folks like that pedal and it definitely has a lot of tweakability.

I'm giving it a try for a light overdrive sound. I'm super picky on overdrive/distortion and it's sounded good to my ears in a lot of reviews. That said, I very well might not care for it either if it's too "digital". I've never had a digital overdrive that I've liked although digital platforms have come a LONG way in the last few years and Source Audio seems to be keeping their engines relatively up to date, so I'm hopeful. If all else fails, I can just get a DG Anagram and tweak for the next 17 years.