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How do I get a dirty tone?

#21
Stu, I don't use any true effects, so my signal chain is very simple. I have a tuner, and then my SansAmp. That goes straight into my Radial DI, and into the amp. I have on occasion used the SanAmp as my DI, and taken that signal straight to the board. I really believe in keeping it simple, and staying true to what I perceive MY tone to be.
 
#23
Spacelordmother said:
Somebody sig that!
Click to expand...

Done. I figured since I immediately scanned the thread to see the responses to rratajski, it probably should be me.

To the OP; beware the SansAmp Bass Driver. Many love it, but I never liked it much. It will give you a dirty sound, but I believe it to be a love it or hate it pedal. I was the latter. I did like the sound and versatility of the VTBass, however.
 
#24
No disrespect to the poster above me, but no need to beware the SansAmp. It's a great piece of gear, and the players who love it, far outnumber those who don't. Actually, this the first time I've ever encountered a negative opinion about it.
 
#25
Spit on your bass, rub moldy bread upon it, throw orange rinds at it, crack rotten eggs over it, never change your strings, use rusty pennies as picks, if it doesn't sound dirty then, try knockin your amp over and then picking it back up, also twisting the patch cord as you put it in over and over again might allow you to possess that sound your looking for...
j/k
 
#26
I think you're being led down the wrong path. Bump your mids, bump your bass, fiddle wih the treble and remember that whatever you hear in your bedroom will not be what appears at band practice/live.
Mids are most important in EQ for dirty grindy tone.

Also, be very aware that Sansamps Bass Drivers tend to ice pick your mids right out. A blend might help you keep some lows and mids while grinding your tone out.

PS-Thanks for teh alley-oop Cheapbass and Spacelord.
 
#28
I would agree with rratajski. The Bass Drivers are great, but they do have a built-in mid scoop. I like my Para Driver a lot, it has a mid knob and a knob to select which mid frequencies you're adjusting - warms up my tone nicely, and for extra grind/all out rage I stomp on my Peavey Hotfoot.

You have the Marshall pedal though, you probably don't need to buy anything new. Just keep fiddling, really.
 
#29
Eric Grossman said:
No disrespect to the poster above me, but no need to beware the SansAmp. It's a great piece of gear, and the players who love it, far outnumber those who don't. Actually, this the first time I've ever encountered a negative opinion about it.
Click to expand...

All I meant in my above post is that while a lot of people LOVE it, I didn't. The OP might not either, regardless of how many other people love it. Give it a test drive before you buy if money is a major issue. Assuming that it is going to be your rig's savior because it has been for others may not be wise.
 
#30
rratajski said:
I think you're being led down the wrong path. Bump your mids, bump your bass, fiddle wih the treble and remember that whatever you hear in your bedroom will not be what appears at band practice/live.
Mids are most important in EQ for dirty grindy tone.
Click to expand...

+1

And why in the world do the people suggesting physically making their bass dirty and using old strings think they are contributing anything at all?!? Come on folks, this is the effects forum. If you think you're cute, you're not, and you've wasted my and others time :rollno:
 
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#31
I have had mixed results with trying to get a good dirty tone out of one amp. I've done dirt pedals that blend (Digitech Bass Driver, Boss ODB-3, etc.) as well as blending regular guitar dirt pedals with a VFB-3 or a Boss LS-2 and it never ended up quite the way I wanted.

What I settled on was a blend of two amps, each optimized for their respective roles:

Clean setup: Ampeg SVT-II into an SVT1540HE cab. This guy is clean and I keep the volume between 2 and maybe 4, depending on the club. 2 to 4 is LOUD on a non-master volume SVT.

Dirty setup: Seymour Duncan KTG-1 tube preamp into a Peavey Classic Series 120 tube power amp, into either an older Peavey 412M or an Epiphone Valve Jr. 1x12" extension cab. I run the KTG-1 with its clean channel pretty quiet, then for dirty sounds I switch to its drive channel which is much louder. I tried setting the clean channel to just mute the second amp, but the volume drop is too much for what I need. The dirty side stays dirty most of the time, but I do occasionally run it clean.

The dirty amp has its mids boosted, and highs and lows slightly rolled off. I play 5-strings and hit the low B a lot, and I don't want the fundamentals of the lowest notes really coming through the dirty side. I'm not going for "bass kazoo," but rather a nice chunky tone with some grit on top.

I can get the exact tone I'm looking for out of just my SVT, but by the time I get there it's too loud to be in the same room with. :) The two-amp setup gets me the clean and dirty mix I want, and it's not that much extra to lug around - once you're carting around an SVT + fridge, one or two more things isn't a huge deal.
 
#32
rratajski said:
I think you're being led down the wrong path. Bump your mids, bump your bass, fiddle wih the treble and remember that whatever you hear in your bedroom will not be what appears at band practice/live.
Mids are most important in EQ for dirty grindy tone.
Click to expand...

This pretty much sums up all the dirty tone knowledge I've ever gleaned from this board, and works absolutely perfectly for me.
 
#33
rratajski said:
I think you're being led down the wrong path. Bump your mids, bump your bass, fiddle wih the treble and remember that whatever you hear in your bedroom will not be what appears at band practice/live.
Mids are most important in EQ for dirty grindy tone.

Also, be very aware that Sansamps Bass Drivers tend to ice pick your mids right out. A blend might help you keep some lows and mids while grinding your tone out.

PS-Thanks for teh alley-oop Cheapbass and Spacelord.
Click to expand...

+1. IME, cutting the mids and boosting bass/treble sounds VERY nice when you're right next to the amp, but in the mix it gets lost and it gets very muddy. The low mids give it a nice thumping punch and the high mids give more clarity.

I agree that you need to be aware that SansAmp Bass Drivers tend to scoop out the mids naturally. But the knobs all interact with each other. So if you want a mid-boost effect, you can just cut the lows and the highs, and since the mids are pre-set, cutting the lows and highs below where the mids are set, and then raising the level knob, will give it a mid-boost effect. But in my experience, the mid scoop wasn't too bad anyway, and I ran my blend knob around 3 o'clock.

However, the VT Bass naturally would probably be more versatile since it DOES come with a mids knob. And I didn't get to A/B the sounds, but many people think the VT gets the classic ampeg tones better.
 
#35
I boost my mids, anyway and when I boost them on the Sansamp RBI, it just adds this fat warm overdrive that I can't get enough of.

The pic here of my rack shows mids not boosted the way I like them, but it was the engineer that changed them while recording. Still got a big old fat tone.

I usually bump the mids higher on the sansamp and a bit higher on the SVT 4 EQ

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#36
The original Guv'nor is an amazing pedal. I would suggest these settings for a very dirty tone:

Level: Equal with clean signal.
Gain: All the way up
Bass: Somewhere between 1:00 and all the way up
Mids: All the way down
Treble: 2 or 3 o'clock

That's all the controls, right?:bassist:
 
#37
Stu L. said:
+1

And why in the world do the people suggesting physically making their bass dirty and using old strings think they are contributing anything at all?!? Come on folks, this is the effects forum. If you think you're cute, you're not, and you've wasted my and others time :rollno:
Click to expand...

For what it's worth, you chose to respond, therefore making the choice to waste your time. I, however, do not consider this rebuttal a waste of my time, because I find it rather amusing that you were annoyed enough by a few sentences that were meant in good fun.

P.S. some drummers actually do bury their cymbals, and some cymbal companies sell cymbals that have been buried at an inflated price.:p Alternatively, a friend of mine wanted to darken the sound of a flat ride that he had, so he rubbed mud all over it. He claims it worked, but who knows.

BACK ON TOPIC
I used to think that scooping (cutting) the mids was a great idea, until I went to band practice. Scooping sounds cool when you're by yourself, but the mids are the frequencies that 'cut' through the mix the most. That's why on a lot of distortion pedals, there is a 'presence' knob, which is essentially a type of mid control. Presence, as in, 'presence in the mix.'

As someone said before, scooping mids too much will get you lost and buried underneath everything else.
 
#38
mattfong said:
For what it's worth, you chose to respond, therefore making the choice to waste your time. I, however, do not consider this rebuttal a waste of my time, because I find it rather amusing that you were annoyed enough by a few sentences that were meant in good fun.

P.S. some drummers actually do bury their cymbals, and some cymbal companies sell cymbals that have been buried at an inflated price.:p Alternatively, a friend of mine wanted to darken the sound of a flat ride that he had, so he rubbed mud all over it. He claims it worked, but who knows.

BACK ON TOPIC
I used to think that scooping (cutting) the mids was a great idea, until I went to band practice. Scooping sounds cool when you're by yourself, but the mids are the frequencies that 'cut' through the mix the most. That's why on a lot of distortion pedals, there is a 'presence' knob, which is essentially a type of mid control. Presence, as in, 'presence in the mix.'

As someone said before, scooping mids too much will get you lost and buried underneath everything else.
Click to expand...

Which time? Burying a bass and other "options" were posted more than once. And my initial post was to reinforce what had been posted about boosting mids. I've never understood the desire to cut mids, when as you've also agreed, is where cutting through happens. We're on the same page here. You hit the nail on the head by suggesting he work with the pedal he already has. I did not see a suggestion to bury said pedal...

And I have heard of drummers doing that. I can understand why it would work on a metal object. Add wood and electronics to the mix, and I think you have a recipe for bad things to happen. Besides, we are talking about drummers here :p
 
#39
Guvnor + EQ is a great bass sound, EQ back in the bottom, in fact, the old one has a fx loop, so with a stereo to pair of monos lead, you can have the eq in the loop for a one stomp distortion solution.

Although, using the guvnor in a clean blend is the ultimate.

I modded my guvnor with some bigger caps for more bottom.
 

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