Tech 21 VT Bass thougts . . .

Tech 21 VT Bass thoughts . . .

I know, there have been plenty of VT Bass pedal threads here, but I just wanted to give some of my own impressions after about six weeks of using this thing. For moderators: If I'm you think I'm being redundant and/or are sick of this topic and you kill this thread, I'll understand.

1) Instant, I mean INSTANT freakin' tone. I can dial from Motown warmth to ballsy grit in seconds now. I barely mess with the settings on my rack pre-amp at this point. Don't have to! A real straightforward and usable pedal - like most Tech 21 stuff.

2) This thing is basically a pre-amp, so watch that Level knob when you engage. Your speakers and ears will thank you for it.

3) When my guitarist first heard this thing, he did a complete double take and said, "Holy crap, what did you just do?!!" He was floored. He then told me I needed to turn down just a bit. That's a good sign.

4) I have been on the search for a perfect overdriven tone for a long time. My version of that tone is a slight edge of grit with punchy mids and no loss of bottom. (No muffled garble or buzz-saw effect for me, thanks. Keep your Big Bass Muffs and MXR's!) I'm also a fingerstyle player, and need to compensate for that 'crunch' and clarity that you normally get from a pick. The VT Bass does it ten times over, in spades. My guitarist used to sneer at overdriven or slightly distored bass tones. Now he asks me to use them.

BTW - I know the best way to get that awesome overdrive is to own a vintage SVT head, but I don't. Instead, I spent $150 bucks on this pedal and have come closer to it than anything I've heard. Close enough for rock and roll = good enough for me. So there!

5) In addition to my tuner and an ISP Decimator, this pedal is always in my gig bag. ALWAYS. I am not a big effect head, nor am I a tweaker. But this thing is indespendable, at least for live use.

6) This pedal WILL pick up and amplify any noise in your signal chain. Which is good, at least for me, because I was able to really find out about the noise in my signal chain and get rid of it. Now I have less noise. Not no noise, but a lot less.

7) The only thing that annoys me is the frequent need to dial the Level knob. Since this is an overdrive pedal, grit = lower the Level knob or else, and back-to-clarity-and-warmth = dial that Level back up.

If Tech21 makes a programmable pedal that sounds EXACTLY like this one, I'm all over it. Yes, they do have programmable pedals that supposedly do the same thing, but they don't. Not really. Not like this.

Yes, I am all whoop-de-do about this pedal. I don't get that way about many things. But damn, man. This thing rocks.

 

Indeed, I forgot to mention that my active bass can be a real pain in the neck with this pedal. My passive sounds much better.

 

Jim C,

For me, this pedal makes my whole set-up sound even better. If I had a zillion dollar Eden rig, I maybe wouldn't need anything. But to answer your question for real: Although no pedal or effect is a be-all-end-all, I think this thing helps to bring out the true character of my rig. And yes, I use this pedal in a 'just EQ' sense without adding grit - all the time. The High, Mid and Low knobs do just what they are supposed to do - better, IMO, than anything else in my signal chain. (That probably says something about the rest of my signal chain!)

The VT Bass was developed to be a tube emulation pedal. In that sense, Tech 21 claims to be able to get you to a warm tube sound, clean tube sound, over-driven tube sound, etc. In my humble experience, it does just that. I consider this thing to be a tube-emulation pedal, not an overdrive, per se, although the overdrive IMO is awesome.

 

Jim C,

You might just need a good EQ pedal, but if you decide to try the Bass VT and you don't like it, you can sell it in about 10 seconds, just like I did here with the extra one I had.

 

LarryR:

- Sansamp RBI
- QSC GX 5 Power Amp
- Ampeg 410 HLF
- Line6 Bass Pod (sometimes)
- Tech 21 Bass VT pedal, all the time
- ISP decimator, when needed

 

wizay:

The GX5 is pretty good so far. No frills, a lot of nice, clean power. 800-850 watts per single channel driven, 700 watts per channel both driven is plenty for me. I don't need to bridge either, which is why I decided on this model. It doesn't have the features of a Crown XTI, which is what I was looking at initially, but at $420 bucks new, with a free six year extended warranty, I couldn't pass it up.