How to thicken my distorted tone.

[Surco]

Hello,

So far, I only have Jam Rattler Bass (RAT clone) pedal and I am using it with my Rumble 25 or directly to an interface (works perfectly without any IR/cabsim).

The pedal is great, but I really miss some thickness and warmth in my tone (even without the pedal). I would like to achieve that while preserving Rattler's unique character.

Should I get some warm comp (e.g., Diamond), or pre-amp (e.g., Vintage Deluxe, Rheingold BP2) or just simple EQ pedal (e.g., Tone Job)?

 

[cnltb]

Before anything else spend more time with what you have and experiment with settings, plucking position etc.
(Imho)

 

[crguti]

Boss LS-2 is what you need. Place the Ratt in one loop and select A+B in the LS-2. Your clean tone who has balls will be mixed with your thin distorted sound.

 

[Beheroth]

Boss LS-2 is what you need. Place the Ratt in one loop and select A+B in the LS-2. Your clean tone who has balls will be mixed with your thin distorted sound.

there's already a clean blend on this pedal

works perfectly without any IR/cabsim

well, have you tried it with one ? might just be the answer

 

[jw23mind]

Saturn VI before the Rat, and/or VT Bass (EQ, cab sim) after the Rat

 

[buldog5151bass]

I would start with your tone knobs. A lot of distortion pedals suck low end.

 

[mmbongo]

A Darkglass Harmonic Booster before your distortion works wonders! I use it for exactly what you're doing. It really beefs up thinner sounding drive pedals.

 

[rratajski]

If you like inherent sound of the Rattler, you might be happier with a RAT-inspired pedal from a different brand that lets you sculpt your distorted tone differently. Instead of having to buy one or more pedals to go with the Rattler to get the sound you seek, get one that does what you want.

 

[NKBassman]

For extra thickness I think you want a clean blend, preferably with a crossover or lowpass filter on the clean side so that you can blend in clean low end with the distorted mids and highs from the pedal. The Broughton Filter FX Loop works wonders. See also Damnation Audio Bypass Loop.

If you're playing through an interface and using a DAW in your computer, you could do this by splitting your bass signal to two channels, with distorted signal on one channel and clean signal on the other, then EQ them to compliment each other and blend to taste. You would need some sort of basic DI or splitter before the distortion pedal to send the clean signal to a second channel.

 

[NKBassman]

If you like inherent sound of the Rattler, you might be happier with a RAT-inspired pedal from a different brand that lets you sculpt your distorted tone differently. Instead of having to buy one or more pedals to go with the Rattler to get the sound you seek, get one that does what you want.

Hmmm, I wonder where he should start looking...

 

[JeezyMcNuggles]

Hello,

So far, I only have Jam Rattler Bass (RAT clone) pedal and I am using it with my Rumble 25 or directly to an interface (works perfectly without any IR/cabsim).

The pedal is great, but I really miss some thickness and warmth in my tone (even without the pedal). I would like to achieve that while preserving Rattler's unique character.

Should I get some warm comp (e.g., Diamond), or pre-amp (e.g., Vintage Deluxe, Rheingold BP2) or just simple EQ pedal (e.g., Tone Job)?

Turn up the bass, turn down the treble.

 

[J Posega]

If you are missing something with or without the pedal, you should spend some time getting to know the tone controls on your bass and amp, and the EQ in your DAW before committing money and time to the rabbit hole of effects.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

If you mean amplified tone, a Rumble 25 really isn't going to sound thick regardless of what pedals you put in front of it.

 

[iiipopes]

Boost the 200-250 slider.

 

[BtaylorTheRogue]

A Darkglass Harmonic Booster before your distortion works wonders! I use it for exactly what you're doing. It really beefs up thinner sounding drive pedals.

A Darkglass Harmonic Booster before your distortion works wonders!

Harmonic Booster before your distortion

before

The time has come to start tinkering again!

 

[john_g]

Boss LS-2 is what you need. Place the Ratt in one loop and select A+B in the LS-2. Your clean tone who has balls will be mixed with your thin distorted sound.

Been thinking of doing this myself. I have an LS-2 which I primarily use to have two basses at gigs. But my Billy Sheehan pedal (first purple one) does suck the lows a bit, so Ive been thinking about using the LS-2 and blend a real clean signal with the BS.

 

[mikecd1]

My Rumble 40 sounds great with the solidgoldfx Beta MkII pedal which gives it a tube-like breakup while retaining the "Phatness" of my sound. I'm sure the Rumble 25 would be similar although thinner. The Beta MKII has a tube preamp side and a distortion side with the switch. Great for recording too. Good luck and let us know what you decide!

 

[Kerem Koseoglu]

I recommend using a multi-band distortion, such as DarkGlass MicroTubes X. That way, you can keep your low end intact while saturating only the frequencies above your determined threshold.

 

[DwaynieAD]

Mids on the eq knob

 

[Sid Fang]

Used a Rat for years. It was really important to keep the distortion low, around 10:00, and the filter no higher than 2:00. Everyone is suggesting you buy their favorite pedal, as usual for TB, but I will say that a few years ago, I went through a bunch of pedals looking for distortion that was Rat-like out of a modern, takes-an-external-9V-supply and has-true-bypass sort of pedal and it was tougher than I expected. Best I found for a proper deep enraged dinosaur tone was the Darkglass Vintage Microtubes.