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Heavy Bass Distortion

#21
Not sure this is exactly what you want, but I use a combination of TRex Bass Juice, with the boost function on top, and very judicious use of an analog delay, set with almost no feedback and fairly short delay time, (but more than a slap-back). Sounds like Godzilla up close to my ears.
 
#22
T Rex Bass Juice or TC Electronic Vintage Bass Distortion (which is a bit warmer and sounds a bit better IMO) beat just about any pedal mentioned here in terms of heaviness. Great blend knob, plenty of range and a boost knob to really shake the walls. Someone mentioned mxr blowtorch - I had it, couldn't hold a candle to VBD. These two are one of the most underrated dirt pedals, especially the tc electronic one.
 
#23
Thanks everyone! I'll take a look into all your suggestions, here and over at ILF.

I'm up to my a-hole in school MFA paper writing right now (apparently the true essence of higher education), and my fun time looking into all these effects has been taken over, lame.

I'll play around more with what I've got too, this week. And try to find time to report what I've discovered. ugh, school...
 
#24
+1 Get something really gnarly and feed it into an eq pedal to boost what you want and cut out that high end fuzzy bit you dont want. I use a Catalinbread Teaser Stallion OD into an MXR 10 band eq and blend that with a low end boosted Sansamp BDDI with the gain and drive very low, so it has warmth, and not crunch.
 
#25
Do you have your Submarine feed into the B3K?... that should be pretty heavy imo.

Also, no one mentioned it yet but the Ashdown Lomenzo Hyperdrive gets pretty gnarly (though I only have first hand experience with its older cousin the Bass Drive Plus).
 
#27
I don't know a hell of a lot about overdriving bass. That's not my particular cup of tea. I have seen some talk of parallel systems and blend knobs above, and I'd like to place emphasis on what I think you all mean by this. On that note:

When overdriving or distorting your bass you will lose low end. If you want the ground shattering, Haitian earthquake style tone, make sure to allow for the clean signal to pass through. Many bass overdrive pedals have this feature. But regardless, get your overdriven and clean signals in parallel and make them both work for you.

In other words, let the overdrive hit the mid to higher ends of your tone (from say 500hz+). And let everything below that pass cleanly to the amp to allow the low end to really move some air.
 
#28
I can tell you that the GK Diesel Dawg gets pretty darn distorted, a lot moreso than I'll ever need. It sounds good at all levels in that I've heard pros use those sounds, they're just not for me. Not being a big pedal/effect guy, I'm not really sure what the difference between distortion/overdrive/fuzz pedals are, but I can say that the Diesel Dawg gets pretty fuzzy at the end, so maybe it's not what you're looking for. Just my input.
 
#29
8strings0hair said:
Do you have your Submarine feed into the B3K?... that should be pretty heavy imo.

Also, no one mentioned it yet but the Ashdown Lomenzo Hyperdrive gets pretty gnarly (though I only have first hand experience with its older cousin the Bass Drive Plus).
Click to expand...

I run the B3K into the Submarine, and also use the BMC to boost the low-mids, @ 150-300Hz depending. I have tried the Lomenzo drive, and really liked it, just too damn big for my board... The B3K was it's replacement, and does what I was using the Hyperdrive for: midrange grind-o-rama.

MatthewC said:
I don't know a hell of a lot about overdriving bass. That's not my particular cup of tea. I have seen some talk of parallel systems and blend knobs above, and I'd like to place emphasis on what I think you all mean by this. On that note:

When overdriving or distorting your bass you will lose low end. If you want the ground shattering, Haitian earthquake style tone, make sure to allow for the clean signal to pass through. Many bass overdrive pedals have this feature. But regardless, get your overdriven and clean signals in parallel and make them both work for you.

In other words, let the overdrive hit the mid to higher ends of your tone (from say 500hz+). And let everything below that pass cleanly to the amp to allow the low end to really move some air.
Click to expand...

Yep, and the above Lomenzo drive does this wonderfully too, you can even choose the width of the midrange Q to distort, leaving the lows alone. To be honest though, I don't experience any lowend loss with the B3K, it has a low-boost if ever I do; and the Tall Font Russian actually boosts lowend with no blending, but is a fuzz monster (no grind, just vroooooom, vrooooom). The Unpleasant Surprise kills everything below say 500Hz, but I blend a clean channel with that, or use it to simulate uber high gain skinny string guitar. It's the only low-end killing effect on my board, and I'm kinda in love with it. ;)
 
#32
Well, I tried all the effects I mentioned I tried, but I'm sure I didn't try every available combination with all of them. Some I owned at the same time, some not.

And it's not so much the heavy, it's the flavor of heavy.

What I have so far:
B3K - midrange grind (clangy, my favorite)
TFR - low midrange vroom (wall o' fuzz)
Unpleasant Surprise - high midrange gated fuzz (fizzle-crackle, I pretend I'm a skinny stringer)

So I want a distortion effect to round out that array of flavor. Something between grind and vroom, I guess. Boulders in a giant metal cauldron. It's in my head, just haven't heard it demonstrated nor replicated it with what I currently have or have had (yet, anyway).

I totally agree that blending separate distortion effects is the way to go, dial in the flavor myself. And delay/reverb seems like a good idea to widen the distortion a bit for earthquake noise. I guess I'm just looking for a distortion effect that gets close on its own too.

I had high hopes for the EBS Metal Drive, just never tried one with a Thumb, though the samples online are kinda close to what I have in mind, kinda. Anyone here use one through an amp?

If I had the cash I'd buy one and return it if it wasn't the thing. Maybe next paycheck. For now, I'm gathering information and playing with combinations of what I currently have. Saving up for the next best suggestion.
 
#33
Dazonbass said:
Ever consider designing your own pedal? Me thinks you will say you are a little busy for that, but it was my only suggestion I could really give.
Click to expand...

I did think about it, and it may be in the works. I want to see what my other options are first, since I've had inconsistent luck with building my own.
 
#34
Vlad5 said:
All good advice. I've tried a few of those options: HM-2, Rat Tail, Elements. I always found too much fizz with those. Maybe it's my active electronics, maybe I just need to back off the volume a bit, I don't know. I blended the crap out of them too.
Click to expand...


Maybe that's the real problem, Vlad: ACTIVE ELECTRONICS.

When I had an active bass I always had a hard time finding a good thick distortion (or adapting my distorsions on which my passive basses shine) without sounding too fuzzy at the end, I sold my 2 active basses..

The only acceptable result was the HM-2 and HM-3 in a very especific setting.

What's exactly the sound that you really want? a "Tool" distortion sound(with active electronics)? I would start from there, finding a sound on a record that you like and making a search for the amp-pedals of the bass player, to get the idea..
 
#36
I know you said no fuzz in your original post but I looked at the list of effects you've used & noticed you haven't owned Brassmaster or Superfuzz style pedals before. I'd recommend checking one of those out. Either of these will get really heavy & retain clarity & articulation. They both work fine with active basses too.
 
#37
Bassist30 said:
What do some of you think of source audio distortion?
Click to expand...

I'd say go for the Classic Distortion Pro rather than the Multiwave.

I've had one for over a year and it's perfect for me. I can get fuzz and heavy distortion. I was like so many others that wanted a guitar distortion on the bass, but with that you need a blend and more than likely an eq and with distortion you may also need a noise gate. Well the Classic Distortion Pro has all of those, plus you can save all those things to a preset. So the pedal it a little large, but considering it takes the place of 2-3 dirt pedals, an eq pedal, a blend/LS2 pedal and a noise gate it's not only a good value it's very effecient.

The sound is clean and clear, no hiss for overdriven gain. You can morph between presets with an expression pedal and control it with midi. The Hot Hand is pretty subtle effect on the Classic Distortion, but still makes a nice tremelo effect.

If you only needed one distortion sound or didn't mind tweeking knobs between songs, I'm sure the non-Pro version would give plenty of great sounds, you would lose the blend/eq/noise gate. But these pedals are kind of under the radar. These was a Pro in the classifieds for $100 and the same on ebay.

I have a Multiwave Bass Distortion Pro also and it can get a few old school distortions, but I didn't fall head-over-heals for it like I did the first few minutes playing with the Classic Pro. The Multiwave has some interesting sounds, but the foldback stuff seems to have artifacts or extra sounds that I'm not that into yet. I have the two pedals stacked and actually like the Multiwave better that way. I'm sure that could still work with just about any fuzz/dirt before the Multiwave, but if you want a killer tube distortion/overdrive/fuzz like you get from Marshall, Mesa, Tube Screamer, ProCo Rat, Metal, tone blenders, octave fuzz pedals, get a Classic Pro.
 
#39
Thanks again everyone!

Been thinking about this for the last day (finally finished the school paper)...

I'm broke for new effects for now, so buying and trying is out for a few weeks at least. Still, I'm preparing myself for when the funds do roll in.

As far as new purchases go, I may look into:

HE El Oso
EBS Metaldrive

The concern I have with all the bass distortion effects (not fuzz) I've heard online is the buzziness. The low end sounds close to what I want in the mix but the mids are all-a-buzzz. So with these, I'd use the BMC to cut the high-mids into them, parallel blend that into a clean signal, then run the B3K after that in serial. Or parallel blend the B3K to them... hmmm....

As far as using what I have:

I'm going to try moving effects around the signal path. My initial intent with the board was to have a channel for clean and a channel for dirt, as I do now. But I think I'll move the Timeline after, and the Octave before, the Schism. Then I'll separate the distortions from low-freqs and high-freqs, at least initially. The Schism does have a 3rd channel which is a clean blend, so I'll still have a clean channel, but an 'effect em all' or 'effect none' Octave.

Something like:

in > Octave > Schism > B3K > Timeline > Submarine > out
Ch 1: TFR
Ch 2: Surprise > Bottom Feeder > Faye Sing

idk... the B3K, I've recently discovered, sounds awesome after both fuzzes, so I think I'll leave it out of the loop for now. I have another muff variant on the way to put in channel 1 with the TFR (channel DOOOOOOM!!!). All the 'crazy stuff' will be in channel 2, for now. I'll of course play with the location of the drive, but I've already tried parallel blending it with the other dirt pedals and I like the serial blend better.

Totally different approach than what I had before, but, it's a good time for change.
 

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