As I posted in a previous post I use a Behringer GDI21 in the California setting, which is a Tech 21 GT2 clone, followed by a graphic Eq that boost the low mids and mids slightly and cut the high mids and high frequencies slightly, then blended with some clean bass signal via my Boss LS-2.
And then, since I split my bass signal in 2 parallel effect paths, with one carrying my bass signal, and one running through an octaver pitching my bass signal up 1 octave, giving me the effect of something similar to playing a 10 string octave bass (that I tune 2 half steps up from E standard tuning to F# to D), just with the advantage of being able to run effects on the bass and octave signal separately, I run the octave signal through a Boss MT-2 Metal Zone, making for my overall distorted tone in conjunction to the GDI21 on my bass signal.
Neither of the 2 distorted signals actually really sounding very good alone, but together making for a seriously massive and muscular high gain killer distortion, while actually still maintaining really good definition, and not sounding the slightest muddy.
Here's a new sample of how my distortion setup sounds, as I changed it once again, in my opinion making it sound a lot better, and resulting in a seriously massive distortion, overall with a bit more gain than the sample I posted in a previous post, and sounding much more heavy and muscular (still a direct signal going from my 5 string Ibanez Mikro with it's 2 series wired stock J pickups, through my effects chains, into my amp, and then from the line out of my amp into my sound interface, without any further editing or additional effects, compressor or Eq added):
Dropbox - all I nil - New Distortion Sample.mp3 - Simplify your life
I also figured out a way to make the effect I use running a flanger on the bass signal and a phaser on the octave up signal sound clearer and cleaner, since it still sounded a bit muddy and dirty, even after I tuned my bass up from E to F#, this fix also giving me an overall better 1 octave up tone.
The thing is that I found out that there was a slight bit of a lower pitched signal coming from my Sub'n'Up Mini, even with only the octave up activated, so I made a Toneprint, using the app, with a low cut on the output signal of the 1 octave up effect at 90Hz, since my F#, as the lowest note possible on my bass, pitched an octave up is around 92Hz, and just to be sure there was nothing going on with the 1 octave and 2 octaves down effects interfering with my octave up signal, I also made a low cut at 20Khz on the output of those 2 effects.
This didn't alone result in the subtle low end signal mixing with my octave up signal totally disappearing, making my 1 octave up signal overall sounding much better, clearer and clearer, but also for some reason gave the octave up an insane amount of output volume, so I turned the octave up knob down quite a bit, and actually set it to a slightly lower output volume than it had before, since I got a guitar preamp last in that signal path that I can adjust the overall volume of the signal with, and that lower signal volume, together with the fact that there was now no sub octave signal going on in the background of my 1 octave up signal, resulted in my phaser pedal, that comes right after the octaver in the signal path, sounding much better, clearer and cleaner as well.
