i totally agree with you, chris. that's half the attraction for me. but the people spoke and they wanted a speaker sim defeat.
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VT Bass Availability?
- Thread starter Down_Low
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I had my VT modded to include a speaker sim defeat switch by Putnam Guitars. I agree that for standard "bass" tones, there's plenty of highs and lows present in the VT. However, using it at the end of the chain with various other effects that have lots of crispy highend content (fuzz, synths), the speaker sim can sound like a blanket over your crazy sounds. Defeating the sim brings back the fizz. For most on this forum, I think that is the selling point for the new version.
The function to "Buy Now" on our website routes your order to a dealer network. Its purpose is to make it easier to purchase our products. You are not buying directly from us. If the unit you just purchased is being shipped immediately it is the original version as the 2011 models have not been shipped yet.
Not on the updated version with the defeat switch. While the switch does disengage the speaker emulation part of the circuit it also provides a 6db per octave high end roll off. This allows the pedal to interface a little more easily into an amp that has it's high end boosted.
What type of amp and cab are you using?
From my understanding the Putnam mod totally disengages the speaker sim circuit. I don't have first hand experience with his mod but when we do the mod in house it will give you an even brighter top end, flatten the bass response and there will be a bit of a volume boost. The feedback we got from many players was that the pedal was too "bright" going into the front end of an amp which is more about your amp's preamp settings than the VT Bass. There is a mod for the updated VT Bass that can be easily done by cutting a trace in the circuit that will eliminate the speaker sim entirely if so desired. The thing is with the low and high controls there is 12db of boost or cut so it's hard to imagine needing more high end.
The Putnam nod does add quite a volume boost when defeating the speaker sim. About not needing more highend on the non-modded version- with a fuzz pedal before the VT, even with VT's high all the way up- the fuzzes higher frequencies still sound muted. Don't get me wrong, this boosted treble setting is extremely bright. But it seems like it is boosting a lower frequency treble while also rolling off frequencies that contains fuzz content. What I'm trying to get accross is that the high knob doesn't compensate for the frequencies that are rolled off.
What amp, cab and bass (active or passive) are you using? How exactly are you hooking up the VT Bass pedal into your rig? What is before it and after it? What are the settings and what exactly are you trying to accomplish with the VT Bass? Are you using it as an always on pedal because you are unhappy with your bass amp's basic tone or are you using it as an alternative sound? Also if you prefer the sound of your fuzz directly into your amp why put the VT Bass in line?
well to be honest, from all the intense scrutiny the vt's gone through with people making their own frequency plots of it, we've discovered there is far greater capability to add treble than to take it away. most of us agree that when you set the vt for near flat response, the treble knob is somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00, and anything past 12:00 is verging on insanity.
fortunately, the near flat settings work very well for me
and i can roll off the treble knob on my bass if i need less. but i do kind of understand what people are saying. i thought you guys did it so you could get the full range of svt tones including those with the ultra-hi switch engaged. makes sense if you did, but i'll admit there are times i would like to be able to cut more treble directly from the pedal without messing with character setting.don't get me wrong though...it'll always be the pedal of the future to me
but if i were to nitpick anything about it, that would be it.well to be honest, from all the intense scrutiny the vt's gone through with people making their own frequency plots of it, we've discovered there is far greater capability to add treble than to take it away. most of us agree that when you set the vt for near flat response, the treble knob is somewhere between 9:00 and 10:00, and anything past 12:00 is verging on insanity.
fortunately, the near flat settings work very well for me
don't get me wrong though...it'll always be the pedal of the future to me
If you understand the architecture of the VT Bass pedal and think of it as an amp it is a little easier to explain though you probably know this already. The drive knob on the pedal is like the volume control on your SVT. It allows your bass signal to be boosted and shaped in the preamp section of the amp and in turn hits the power section of the amp. The Character control adjusts frequency response as well as the drive and attack characteristics of the amp. It basically gives you the ability to "mod" the amp on the fly and is very interactive with the drive control. Afterwords comes the speaker emulation circuitry which does what your bass amp's speaker cab does. It's a final tone shaper and is designed to give you the sound of the amp being mic'd at the mixing board but with a very even frequency response and without all the artifacts that can occur with using a single mic. That's really the amp portion side of things. The SansAmp circuitry.
The level, low, mid and high controls are all post SansAmp and are designed to give you the same control you would have in the studio post microphone.
What all this means is that when the low, mid and high controls are at noon they are neither boosting or cutting any frequencies. They are flat. When people run their own frequency plots they are confusing the fact that the frequency curve with the controls flat is the correct tonal curve of the VT Bass. It's emulating an amp. For that matter your bass amp is not really flat either. Most guitar and bass amp's are anything but flat. The problem that you experience with too much high end is the same problem guitarists have with overdrive and distortion pedals. They assume there amp is "flat" and then run a pedal into the amp and hear too much high end and fizz when the pedal is engaged. The thing is if you are using the bright channel of the amp there is a bright boost cap on the input which boosts high end. Unfortunately this high end boost might sound great with your straight bass tone but when you add a gain producing device such as the VT Bass it will over accentuate the high end harmonics. This can get even worse for players running full range systems.If you could bypass your amp's preamp and go straight to the power section you would find that the "pedal" is not as bright as you thought. The other problem is that the bright boost on amps do not work in a linear fashion. They are more intense when the volume is reduced and have less of an affect when the volume is raised. Depending upon how much high end you bass amp's preamp is producing will pretty much dictate how much high end you may need to adjust on the pedal. If your amp's preamp is too bright with the pedal you can either turn down a bit of the treble on your amp or just turn down the treble control on the VT Bass. You can turn it off if you want. Whatever "sounds" best. It won't hurt anything though you may have to compensate with the level control.
In your case since you have a vintage SVT with two channels you could actually set up the bright channel for your normal bass sound and route the VT Bass pedal to the second channel and eq it without the bright boost for a more neutral tone that will work better with the pedal.
Ah! This clears things up nicely. I was trying to get a VT Bass pedal from Sam Ash in NYC and they weren't really forthcoming with info about why they didn't have any in stock at this time, and there seemed to be some confusion regarding a new version of the VT bass which was coming out soon. I had a chance to try out the old version, but I'd definitely welcome this new one.
well like i said, i enjoy the vt very much as is and i have no problems dealing. not sure what you mean by "correct tonal curve," though. do you mean it flatlines when the tone controls are at 12:00 and the character and drive are off, or that what you guys perceive as its best sound is the tone controls set flat?
The "correct tonal curve" means that the sound of the pedal when engaged is not meant to be flat as it is emulating an amp in it's entirety. What would be the point of it being flat? The pedal is "flat" when in bypass mode. What you are experiencing is what is common with guitarists and OD pedals. They plug a pedal in between their guitar and amp to generate distortion and when their amp's eq sometimes fights the pedal they think that the pedal is not flat and that is the problem.In your case when you are using the VT Bass which is emulating an Ampeg which you are already using you have in essence run two amps into each other. You can't generate distortion without some type of EQ curve and still make it sound good. If you take one of our pedals and completely bypass the speaker sim and run it into a mixing board you can get an OK clean tone. If you goose up the gain a great deal and create a very over driven signal there will be a ton of fizz in the sound because distortion generates way more harmonics than a clean tone will. This is why nearly all of the OD units on the market have some sort of filter in the circuitry. This is not to say you can't use our VT Bass into the front of an amp. This was one of the design goals. You will just have better results if you set your host amp up in a more neutral fashion. There really isn't a good way to get a multiple of different amp sounds into the front end of a single amp without some sort of tonal compromise.
Hopefully this makes sense. If you want a pedal that is pretty flat when engaged that is our Para Driver DI. If you turn the blend control counter clockwise and leave all the EQ's at noon the sound will be pretty flat. You can then blend in the SansAmp tube emulation with your straight sound.
Any sort of an update on when the new version of the VT Bass might be making it out to dealers? I've been trying to get one from Sam Ash, but they've been less than forthcoming on when they might actually be getting one to fulfill my order.
My VT arrived on Thursday from Long & McQuade. It is the old version with instructions for the new version in the box (that's weird). That being said, the pedal is everything expected and then some. Very nice tubey sounds that can easily pass for the real deal. Hats off to Tech21, you really made a first class pedal. I suspect I won't miss the speaker emulation bypass, but good luck to the rest of you who are waiting.
