VT pedal, distortion, overdrive, fuzz; suggestions needed

To answer your question, "what is the difference between overdrive, fuzz, and distortion"; the short answer is as follows:

Fuzz: A hard clipping square wave tone. The earliest attempts at solid state distortion were fuzz
Distortion: A hard clipping square wave tone with added filtering.
Overdrive: A soft clip square wave with filtering.

Those general rules being set, the terms do get thrown about interchangeably, usually for marketing purposes. Everyone has their own take, and most pedals out there are tweaks of the same circuits. You'll save yourself a lot of money if you can determine which pedals are tweaked tubescreamers, RATs, DOD250s, Big Muffs, etc.

 

woah, you're asking a bunch of stuff in there. OK, let me see if I can address at least some of it. So, in terms of Lee, I believe he is using Orange apmplification these days. He uses Tech 21 RBI for his dirt sound. That's a rack mount unit but, you can get close with the new version of the Tech 21 BDDI. I believe Bruce really was about fuzz by overdriving a tube amp. Keep in mind his axe of choice was a Gibson EB3, that humbucker in the neck position created a very low booming sound. Tought to get that in a bass these days. His tone is different than Lee so, two ends of the spectrum really. Maybe something like an EHX Bass Big Muff would get you there. Enthwistle, another big over drive the amp guy.

So, what would I recommend. Well, I'd start with a good compressor (check out ovnilabs.com for really decent reviews of many compressors) and probably check out a Tech 21 BDDI (new version). You're right, there are a ton of pedals out there that will give you some dirt. The trick is to find one you like without spending a fortune. Take your Bass to a store and check some of them out and watch the classified on this site. There are a ton of pedals in the classifieds.

By VT pedal I'm assuming you mean the Tech 21 VT Bass. It's a great pedal but, I don't use if for dirt I use it to shape tone on one of my boards. My dirt comes from an EBS Billy Sheehan Sig. Drive looping in a Way Huge Pork Loin. To kick in some addiitonal drive sound, I have a Source Audio Aftershock. I don't use crazy distortion, I vary the amount of tube like overdrive. Just enough to give the tone some attitude. I certainly have the iron to go nuts if I need to but, it's not the kind of music I'm playing at the moment. A simple place to start would be something like the following:

compressor -> chorus -> Tech 21 BDDI (v2)

I have three good compressors. Two of which are outstanding... MXR Bass Chorus Deluxe, MarkBass Compressore
In terms of chorus, that will fatten up the sound, I just use a little... favorites include TC Electronic Corona, Boss Bass Chorus

Hope this gives you some good info,
Fran

 

Haven't tried it my self, but I would still recommend you to try out the Orange Juice from Joyo pedals.

It is a dead cheap overdrive/distortion unit, that according to what I have read should have the cabability of doing anything from a light overdriven sound to killer crunchy crispy distortion.

Actually it is an attempt to make an analog emulation of an Orange guitar amp, but according to my sources it should sound really good for bass as well.

As for compression I can not recommend the EHX Black Finger enough, it is a tube driven optical compressor, and while not exactly in the cheap end, and while it gets a lot of hate, which I don't understand, it really makes my bass shine.

Adds a good deal of punch to my sound, smoothens out my playing a tad bit, slightly boost my signal, improves the definition of my tone quite a bit plus it adds some overall undefinable niceness to it.

If it's over your budget I suggest you try out the EHX Bass Preacher compressor.

Finally the difference between overdrive, distortion and fuzz sound wise is as follows:

Overdrive: Will add a slight grit to your tone, in the best cases a bit like a moderately pushed tube amp, in the wort cases a little fizzle in the upper register.

Distortion: Is a stronger type of overdrive, that sounds like if you are pushing a tube amp extremely hard. It goes all from slightly harder overdrive to full over the top metal like tone.
Again in the best cases it will add a good deal of extra grit and crunch to your tone, in the worst cases it will sound like a disturbed bee hive and just produce a lot of annoying fizzle.

Fuzz: Is kind of an extreme distortion, that kind of totally destroys and mess with your original tone, hard to describe but it sounds more like a broken tube amp or playing through a broken speaker. There are lot of variations and while most of them have a more soft sound (not to be mistaken with wimpy, more like in the sense of mud, in the best possible meaning of the word, although some fuzz units really do sound like unusable mud.) than distortions, some of them are gritty and gnarly as hell too, a gated fuzz can even sound synth like.
In the best cases fuzz sounds like a rich ornamented carpet of soothing cosmetic mud with interesting grain structures made of tons of beautiful creamy harmonics or a chaos of disharmonic gnarling nastiness (as the Fender Blender is the best example of). In the worst cases it sounds like a whole bucket of stinking swamp mud poured over everything you play just making indistinguishable noisy mud, no matter what you play.

All overdrive/distortion/fuzz units works by adding a square (or in some cases saw wave) signal in various degrees to your original signal and create a lot of extra harmonics, the more gain you feed your overdrive/distortion/fuzz unit with the more it will clip your original signal and the more harmonics it will add to it.

Also try looking up some bass demos of various respectively overdrive, distortion and fuzz units on YouTube to get and idea of what the difference is yourself.

 

I can't say for sure that a VT would give you what you want, as that's kind of a personal decision, but I use a VT Deluxe on some of my gigs because it's got 6 presets, and it does everything from clean to fuzz and does it well.

 

Oh, I missed the VT part of your post it seems, even if it's in the headline too... Doh!

I had a VT Deluxe home for trial at some point and personally I couldn't get one good sound out of it.

It might have been me or it might have been that particular pedal, but I thought it made everything sound muffled, like covering my bass tone in some kind of uncomfortable all too tight wrapped blanket or wooly straight jacket.

Also I am quite sure it is not particularly crunchy or gritty as you describe the sound you are looking for, more like mellow, but not in the creamy nice way, rather in a claustrophobic uncomfortable way, in my opinion.

I think it is meant to emulate an Ampeg B-15 kind of tone, if I remember correctly, but having owned one myself, I can tell it sound nothing like it whatsoever, at least my pedal didn't.

You might like it though, a lot of people seems to do, it's just not for me, or I might have had a faulty unit.

As I said in my previous post my best bet for a crunchy, gritty, gnarly overdrive/distortion unit wold be a Joyo Orange Juice or a Tech 21 Oxford, which the Joyo is kind of a clone of anyway.

 

Between the Drive and Character knob, you should be able to dial in the right amount of hair to your liking. All the knobs are extremely sensitive so a little tweak can get you a completely different sound. Too much grind? Lower the character, boost the mids (to compensate for mid scoop if that's your thing) boost the bass and you should get a fuzzier sound. Endless possibilities with this pedal. I like using this page Bass Pedal Preamp Shootout as a good starting point to hear tones. You can hear from the heavy drive settings used in the clips that you'll get more dirt from the VT than the BDDI.

 

That's one thing I left out...it does take some experimenting to get a good sound out of them. The knobs are quite sensitive and interactive, so it's got a fairly big learning curve.

 

+1 Joyo OJ
KILLER

 

I'd recommend Creation audio Grizzly Bass
or if your bass needs darkening/beefing up Solid Gold Beta, other versions are brighter too
I don't know if these are available but it does what you are looking for, Wounded Paw Black Sheep

 

If this is what you are looking for, I think you want an OD,, not Distortion, and NOT Fuzz.

I would consider the Way Huge Pork Loin. It does exactly this - it does not change your tone when you engage it. It has a lot of headroom, and can do a little tiny bit of hair, to full on OD. The other one I've found is the Darkglass Vintage Micro Tubes. It also does not alter your tone. I think the Darkglass is a little more adjustable than the Pork Loin, but I like the PL better. It's also cheaper.

Lot's of guys like the Barbershop OD by Fairfield, but I thought it changed my tone quite a bit when I kicked it on. It sounded good, but I was looking to not change my tone,, just add a little dirt.