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Is this a good idea?

inate_hex

inate_hex

Apr 4, 2010
485
229
Manchester, England
Disclosures
I occasionally wet the bed.
#1
I currently use a multi effects pedal. It does a lot more than I need it too and it is a bit of an effort to programme. I don't use an amp and cab setup on gigs. I just DI from my pedal straight into the board. I was thinking of ditching the mfx unit, getting a sansamp BDDI to shape my clean sound and adding a B3k for my distorted sound. I would also run these straight to the board? Would this work? Are there any better/ alternative solutions?
 
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#9
Id recommend instead of the BDDI maybe spending a little more on a pretty much any of the other more expensive bass specific sans amp for more functionality. Particularly if your wanting to use dirt look into the vt stuff, they make a vt bass di now also. The BDDI is a classic but considering the cost of a used RBI, rpm, or the programmable bass DIs i probably wouldn't get another BDDI.
 
#10
Nephilymbass said:
Id recommend instead of the BDDI maybe spending a little more on a pretty much any of the other more expensive bass specific sans amp for more functionality. Particularly if your wanting to use dirt look into the vt stuff, they make a vt bass di now also. The BDDI is a classic but considering the cost of a used RBI, rpm, or the programmable bass DIs i probably wouldn't get another BDDI.
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Funnily enough, I stumbled on the vt bass DI yesterday whilst looking at demos of pedals on YouTube. I think this is the pedal I'm going for. I will use this for my clean sound and pair it with the b3k for when I want some distortion. Thanks for your reply.
 
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#11
The m80 is a very versatile box..
It can do scooped if you want scooped, and has a distortion channel already built in. It isn't going to be as good as the b3k, but with careful blending, it can sound great.
 
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#13
Or you can get the programmable version of the bddi that way you just need a single pedal, you can set 1 for.your normal tone and the other one for dirt tone. The thing about bddi is you either love it or hate it, Which is why the recommendations from the guys here.

The mxr m80 also allow you to have a clean and dirt channel.

Or the new ampeg scr di which has a seperate clean and dirt too.
 
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#14
inate_hex said:
Funnily enough, I stumbled on the vt bass DI yesterday whilst looking at demos of pedals on YouTube. I think this is the pedal I'm going for. I will use this for my clean sound and pair it with the b3k for when I want some distortion. Thanks for your reply.
Click to expand...
The speaker sim on the vt filters out super high frequencies (the ones that typically make running dirty sounds direct sound bad) and really makes over drives distortions and fuzzes sound better. It does some nice overdrive on its own but the way it filters out that high frequency noise makes every dirt pedal sound better.
 
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#16
You could go B7K for the DI and then Joyo American, or B7K and VMT if budget is truly not a concern. I've got a B3K, VMT, and Joyo American and use all three. A lot of people here sing the praises of the American, which is why I got it to try, even though I have the B3K and VMT. For the price it's worth checking out. And you will also get a ton of B7K love here also. If I had it to do over one of mine would have been the DI version.
 
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#18
I have pretty much all that you've listed. MXR M-80, MXR M81, B7K, and a Sansamp RBI rack unit.
I'll try to keep this short, I know I tend to ramble, but it might help you with the rabbit trail I went down similar to this.

I started out looking for drive and grit. Had a Boss ME-50B, didn't like the distortions/OD on it.
Got a Sansamp Bddi (3 program pedal). Totally dug the tone of the Sansamp, it really gave me what I was looking for. On a whim to try new things, I got the MXR M80 distortion pedal. It's got 2 channels, one is Effect, and the other is the distortion. You can turn the gain down really low on the distortion side to make it give a small amount of grit, and have two useful channels.
The Distortion on the MXR M80 is more of a love/hate thing. I find it to be VERY aggressive and not really what I was looking for. In a band setting, I found that it didn't cut through the mix.

What I did like on the MXR M-80 was the clean effect with the "Color" option. It really makes it sound awesome. So I found out that MXR recently came out with the M-81, I figured it was like having the MXR M-80's "Effect" channel all in a controllable pedal, with complete control of the mids. After about an hour of tinkering with both pedals, I realized that the "Color" option on the M-80 is a scoop. I was able to replicate the M-80's sound through the M-81 by boosting the lows and highs and cutting the mids. Sounds great, but live, it'll just drain me out of the mix.
So I completely ditched the M-80, and switched over to the M-81. I use the M-81 not as a tone shaper, but more of a volume/bass control. When my guitarists are soloing or when there's a clean part in our songs, I sometimes find that I'm a little too boomy and up front in the mix in our jam room. So I set the M-81 to drop the bass a little, and lower my output to where I sit in better with the rest of the band.


My currently tone is a B7K that's always on so that I can sculpt the EQ, and then I run the blend @ 2 oclock, and the drive down at 9 oclock. that is pretty much my tone 95% of the time. On songs where I can run the drive high for the whole song, I up the drive and lower the level a little to keep it balanced. On songs where I keep the B7K's drive low, but I need to add drive mid song, I have a Darkglass VMT with heavy drive and heavy blend. Stacked, the two work well. But I'm going to probably replace it with a B3K.

One thing I will say about the Sansamp line, if you get the BDDi or something else, you're only going to get a bass and treble control. I got the RBI rack unit because it's got a mid control, which I boost. So be weary of that. I think to boost the mids on the other pedals you're supposed to cut the bass and treble and it'll bring the mids out. I was using the Sansamp Rbi with my B7K on a lot, but I've found that I can run just the B7K and my tone cuts through a little better since the Sansamp has a little bit of a natural scoop to it.
I also have a vid online going through the pedals. It's kind of long winded, but I intend on cleaning it up and having a better presentation of the pedals. I haven't removed it yet, but I probably will once I have a better plan on how to document it and put it into a nice concise informative video.

My opinion, I'd highly suggest going with a B7K. You can get the eq the way that you want it, and get some awesome drive out of it. The blend and level controls on the B#K work a bit differently than most pedals and give you a lot of options to sculpt a tone you're looking for.
 
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#19
I like just a direct box on my bass to the board, or a line out pre-eq from my monitor amplifier, but then again I rarely use effects. I have always been a fan of the Bass POD if I needed an amplifier/speaker emulation, which it has many, plus effects, plus a tuner, plus the best "stompbox" compressor, plus midi, etc. I have ever used.
 

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