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Tech 21 VT Bass Deluxe - NAD...sort of

#21
pfschim said:
I agree, nice box. One piece of advice that helped me immensely is to write down the setting changes as you make them. With 6 presets and 6 options for each of the presets, I found myself going nuts trying to remember specific setting details. Once you nail your presets down to your liking, then it gets easier. I generally have 3 B15 flavored settings and 3 SVT flavored settings. On each of those groupings (B15 and SVT) I make the 3rd one the dirtiest (if I want any of that at all). This approach at least helps me to organize them in my head a bit.

good luck
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This is a very smart approach to filling the banks. Thanks for sharing, I may well give this a try
 
#22
JimmyM said:
What helped me a lot was knowing where near-flat is on the VT. As far as we can determine through consensus of a lot of folks who scoped them, flat is slightly past noon for bass, mids and character at 12:30, and highs at 10:00. Once I learned that, getting it to work right for me became much easier.
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This is valuable information that should come printed with the PDF or in the box instructions.

Thanks for sharing.
 
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#23
Joeplanet said:
This is valuable information that should come printed with the PDF or in the box instructions.

Thanks for sharing.
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Well, if it were easy everyone would have one. Actually, the more you work with it the easier it gets. At first it just takes some time to understand how it functions. Once you realize that and you know what it's capabilities are then it's worth it's weight in gold. Great unit. Glad I finally have one.
 
#24
I've got one and it is worth getting to me. It's probably my most used piece of gear! I'm not a HUGE fan of the sound, but it is extremely convenient! Most of the gigs I play, I don't even need to bring an amp. I just bring a bass, cables, and the pedal and I'm set. I use it for recording too. I get a decent amp sound without going through the trouble of micing an amp.
 
#25
Sundogue said:
...I've never even been into fuzz or overdrive all that much, but for some reason I even dig that a bit.
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Don't know if you discovered this or not but this pedal is FANTASTIC at "beefing up" overdrive, fuzz, and distortion pedals. Set them in front of the VT Deluxe and adjust everything to taste, you'll be surprised how much aggression it retains while also giving you more bass and mid content in the overall tone. It even made my DS-1 and Pro-Co Rat II sound like a chainsaw powered by a V8 engine. Fuzz pedals work fantastic with it, this is particularly useful if you're using the VT as a DI.
 
#26
On my own I only have the VT Bass V2 which is great !
The trick is really to understand the interaction between the Character and the Drive. The more the Character is high, the more you can focuse the drive only on the mids and keep your lows cleaner (if you're more looking into some grit). And so if you lower the character you'll have to increase the drive if you want a dirtier tone, but the drive will be more effective on the lows. It really depends on what kind of tone you're after.

I'm really interested in the VTD but I don't know how you guys who own it deal to adapt your tone to the different rooms you play. You change all your presets everytime ? Or you adjust the global tone with an external eq ? Because on my own I always have to tweak a bit my VT depending where I play.
 
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#27
ticol07 said:
On my own I only have the VT Bass V2 which is great !
The trick is really to understand the interaction between the Character and the Drive. The more the Character is high, the more you can focuse the drive only on the mids and keep your lows cleaner (if you're more looking into some grit). And so if you lower the character you'll have to increase the drive if you want a dirtier tone, but the drive will be more effective on the lows. It really depends on what kind of tone you're after.

I'm really interested in the VTD but I don't know how you guys who own it deal to adapt your tone to the different rooms you play. You change all your presets everytime ? Or you adjust the global tone with an external eq ? Because on my own I always have to tweak a bit my VT depending where I play.
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I haven't had a chance to use it live yet. But I always want a separate EQ at my disposal to be able to tweak the room. I'd rather have my tone set and EQ only those frequencies where the room is a problem. Of course those EQ changes for the room will affect my tone to a degree, but I can better isolate them with graphic and/or parametric EQ's without affecting it too much.
 
#28
ticol07 said:
On my own I only have the VT Bass V2 which is great !
The trick is really to understand the interaction between the Character and the Drive. The more the Character is high, the more you can focuse the drive only on the mids and keep your lows cleaner (if you're more looking into some grit). And so if you lower the character you'll have to increase the drive if you want a dirtier tone, but the drive will be more effective on the lows. It really depends on what kind of tone you're after.

I'm really interested in the VTD but I don't know how you guys who own it deal to adapt your tone to the different rooms you play. You change all your presets everytime ? Or you adjust the global tone with an external eq ? Because on my own I always have to tweak a bit my VT depending where I play.
Click to expand...

I just use mine as a DI so the soundguy does any eq adjustments needed at the board!
 
#29
I was setting it relatively flat, except for increasing the bass knob a little when I added more overdrive to each preset. Therefore I didn't have to do any special tweaking for every situation.
 
#30
Thanks for your replies. I think I'm too much used to the VT eq to fit the room.
I find it more convenient since it's just in front of my feet :)
I will try to keep it stable and make my adjustments from my amp and then I'll be ready for the VTD !!!

And I agree regarding the magical effect the VT has on an overdrive or distorsion put in front of it. It really fattens it.
 
#31
I've got the VT deluxe on my pedalboard, with some effects going into it and some other in the effects loop. From there the VT goes into the input of my Markbass mini cmd151p. The VT is always on and i use 3 presets, one is a nice clean full sound, the other has a little hair on it and then one full blown distortion (fuzzed out preset, with some tweakin'). the eq on my amp is rather flat. When i have to tweak my sound to a room, i use my amp to do so and stay of the VT. Works and sounds perfect.
 
#32
Yeah, the more I work with this VTBD the more I love it. Very simple to switch between the tones I want, from fingerstyle to pick, mellow to aggressive and no more having to mess around with settings on my bass's onboard preamp or my amp any longer. I still will do tweaking for each room via my amp's EQ and perhaps a slight bit of tweaking of my tone with my onboard preamp's tone controls. But once I got the hang of programming the pedal, everything to switch out my tones on the fly could not be easier.

And hell, I am really digging the tone. I thought I had a great tone, but the second I hit one of the switches on the VTBD pedal it's like taking a blanket off my speaker cab (which already is a fEARful 15/6 and is as bright and clean as I care to push it).

The VTBD is without any doubt, the best investment in my tone that I've ever made, with the fEARful 15/6 coming in a close second. The only reason my cab comes in second now is that the pedal gives me the tone I'm after through damn near any amp I've used it with now.

Still haven't used it live, but I have no reservations how it's going to sound on a gig as I already know my bass and amp inside and out and can instantly tell the difference with the pedal in use.
 
#37
I have the original model without presets. A cute trick I like to do is keep an extra piece of paperboard in the box, with the circles pre-drawn aroung the perimeter of a penny in the configuration of the pedal face. Before I start playing I might need to remind myself of some sweet settings that I marked down. Also, if I find a new setting I like, I make the level marks in each of the circles and make a short note about which bass I used and a description of the tone. I'm usually not too fussy, but this process helps toward learning my way too.
 
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#38
Dang it! You guys made me nostalgic for my VTD, and I ended up bringing it on my roadtrip instead of the REDDI I usually bring. Sometimes the compression in the VTD bugs me, but it is a killer sounding pedal for the money and I've got cool presets on it for overdrive, so why not? I'll probably go back to the REDDI after today, but I must admit that getting one through TSA isn't the most fun activity I do.
 
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#39
JimmyM said:
Dang it! You guys made me nostalgic for my VTD, and I ended up bringing it on my roadtrip instead of the REDDI I usually bring. Sometimes the compression in the VTD bugs me, but it is a killer sounding pedal for the money and I've got cool presets on it for overdrive, so why not? I'll probably go back to the REDDI after today, but I must admit that getting one through TSA isn't the most fun activity I do.
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The compression it adds bugs me too. Should I even use it in conjunction with my EBS MultiComp pedal?

Seems a little redundant.
 

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