The EQ is on the return of the loop so if you turn down the bass control on Dirtfixer you are effectively high-passing the output of the pedal in the loop.
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Loosing low ends with distortions
- Thread starter Rupss
- Start date
The EQ is on the return of the loop so if you turn down the bass control on Dirtfixer you are effectively high-passing the output of the pedal in the loop.
FFXL has HPF on the send (before the loop)..and I prefer it that way. With HPF before the loop, one can change what frequencies are being saturated. I like to saturate higher mids, not low mids. With HPF after the loop, one would be stuck with the harmonic content created by saturation applied to full range signal.
YMMV
To me, a HPF in front of the dirt path is equally 'important' as a LPF on the clean path to sculpt the sound I want. Changing the frequency of the HPF is what gives me control over how I fill the mix (of a band). It is my 'anti-mud control'.
Edit: it seems I agree with Zbysek
Edit: it seems I agree with Zbysek
That's an aesthetic choice. The character of a dirt pedal is determined in large part by the high pass filter inherent in it - if you add your own before saturation, it changes it. Almost no overdrives saturate low frequencies (fuzzes sometimes do) - most of them are already cutting off lows and low mids to do what you want, but if you want to do more of that, have at it. Also, when you saturate low mids, it creates high mids - the harmonic content created when a signal is clipped is usually strongest at 3x the frequency that is going in.
A huge part of the blending equation is just picking the right pedal to blend in the first place to build the tone you want. When I talk to folks about bass distortion they mostly have pedals they like the sound of but that don't have enough low end. So a blender pedal solves the low end issue and they can have their big saturated drive tone with the missing frequencies filled in. Its a lot less common that folks have a pedal with too much clipped low end that they want to blend with clean. Those pedals usually hold their own in the mix and maybe you tweak the amp a bit to work with them.
Pedals like the Rat and DS-1 mentioned in the OP are great blend candidates because they tend to just need the low end help but everything in the mids and upper mids is nicely balanced.
Pedals like the Rat and DS-1 mentioned in the OP are great blend candidates because they tend to just need the low end help but everything in the mids and upper mids is nicely balanced.
A byproduct of distortion is compression. When you try to blend the clean and signals they don't integrate fully because one signal is compressed and one is not.
Results should be far better if you add an appropriate amount of compression to the clean signal. Or better yet if you want a higher gain sound, process the clean signal with both compression and a low gain OD. The low gain OD should be full range and be adjusted just below the point where it breaks into audible distortion.
It's intentional, so I would describe it as a bass cut rather than a bass loss.
If you run bass full-range through a distortion circuit, most people will think it sounds awful. To get good results, you have to limit the low frequencies sent to the drive circuit. With certain guitar sounds nothing more is required because guitar works well when the extreme lows are thinned out a bit. But of course it's not acceptable if the bass is thinned out too much.
The way the distortion circuit responds will vary depending on the frequency spectrum you feed it. So you get different results if you high pass the signal before it hits the circuit versus applying a high pass to the output of the circuit. This gives the designer choices that will effect the tone and feel.
Either way the lows are cut, so a way of adding the lows back in is needed for bass. This is where parallel processing comes in. However as I said in my previous post, you may not like the results if you try to combine a drive channel and a clean channel with full dynamic range. At the very minimum you may find it beneficial to compress the clean signal so it has a similar amount of compression to the drive signal.
May pedals use internal parallel processing to achieve good results. That does not necessarily mean the user has access to all of the discrete adjustments that are possible. A pedal with parallel processing could potentially have only basic controls like drive, tone, and level.
It's helpful to understand this stuff at a higher level, but all that is required is to find a pedal that produces the sound you like. I.E. it's not strictly necessary to understand how or why a pedal work.
Yes, I agree. I like the flexibility of being able to decide which frequencies will (not) enter the distortion circuit. Hence my preference for HPF before the loop…
If very much depends of the type of distortion being used, a heavy gated trangle or square wave distortion will never blend well with a clean signal regardless of how much compression is applied to the dry signal.
I use a Source Audio Ultrawave as my distortion / dirt / Overdrive / fuzz / gated box of choice. It's also got a fully integrated compressor as well as 2 channels and 2 choices of dirt engine per channel. It's literally the last word in bass dirt. I'm also a big fan of the Source Audio Atlas, which is a gain a 2 channel compressor with up to 2 engines per channel with blending and morphing between engines and channels.
Thank you to everyone who replied—it’s been very helpful!
I’d like to clarify a bit further.
Some of you suggested blending clean and distorted signals: using the clean signal for the low end and the distorted one for the mid-high range. While this approach makes sense in theory, I find it a bit odd because it feels like playing two basses simultaneously—one clean and one distorted.
Others recommended compressing the clean signal to make the transition between the two signals more seamless. However, I’m concerned that adding more pedals could alter the tone too much.
Is there really no better way to preserve the original sound as much as possible?
I’d like to clarify a bit further.
Some of you suggested blending clean and distorted signals: using the clean signal for the low end and the distorted one for the mid-high range. While this approach makes sense in theory, I find it a bit odd because it feels like playing two basses simultaneously—one clean and one distorted.
Others recommended compressing the clean signal to make the transition between the two signals more seamless. However, I’m concerned that adding more pedals could alter the tone too much.
Is there really no better way to preserve the original sound as much as possible?
@Rupss If you are intent on using the DS-1 and the guitar RAT, then no, you have no "better way". They just cut too many lows to be used without a line selector/loop blender.
More so than compressing a clean signal, low-passing it will make even more sense for blending with high gain/distortion; it removes most of the mid and high frequencies from the clean signal, and only lets the low end through. When blending that in with a distorted signal, it will mean the "core" sound of your distortion pedals doesn't have to compete with a dry/clean signal sitting underneath, and will sound like you are used to, but with all the bottom end intact.
There are several pedals for line splitting/loop blending, as well as compressing or low-passing, that won't alter your tone in a noticeable way. I think the Broughton FFXL is your best all-in-one bet for your needs, but it's also discontinued, so not super easy to come by. There's also the Byte Heaven Sugar Britches, which doesn't offer low-passing on the clean signal, but you can choose the crossover frequency between clean and wet signals, which kinda achieves a similar end result
More so than compressing a clean signal, low-passing it will make even more sense for blending with high gain/distortion; it removes most of the mid and high frequencies from the clean signal, and only lets the low end through. When blending that in with a distorted signal, it will mean the "core" sound of your distortion pedals doesn't have to compete with a dry/clean signal sitting underneath, and will sound like you are used to, but with all the bottom end intact.
There are several pedals for line splitting/loop blending, as well as compressing or low-passing, that won't alter your tone in a noticeable way. I think the Broughton FFXL is your best all-in-one bet for your needs, but it's also discontinued, so not super easy to come by. There's also the Byte Heaven Sugar Britches, which doesn't offer low-passing on the clean signal, but you can choose the crossover frequency between clean and wet signals, which kinda achieves a similar end result
Your best bet is to buy a pedal that is designed for bass. If you're stubborn using your Rat and Boss, I'd get a looper pedal w/ a clean blend, a phase switch, and a lower pass filter on the clean side. But there are so many bass specific pedals that can do what your Rat and Boss can do better.
I’ve brought this up in a few contexts, but the Lusithand Ground & Pound is a great bass Rat. The blend control does what you’d expect, but the “clean” signal path has compression added to reduce the parallel signal effect noted by @Wasnex earlier. The compression is at a fixed ratio of 2:1, so it’s not perfect at higher gain settings (which I don’t use much in any case), but it’s a very good compromise for a single-pedal solution.
IME there are a variety of pedals I like that happen to rob low end. I use a parallel loop pedal and always keep one channel running my dry signal. Works great for me, YRMV
This is usually indicative of either too much clean signal in the mix or a clean signal that is full range so all the treble and upper mid from the bass cuts through the drive in the mix. You want a clean blend that removes the treble content to avoid this which is how a clean DI will be blended with distortion in a studio environment.
