Darkglass drive "out of tune"?

Poparad

Poparad

Power User
I haven't played through one in real life, so maybe the real thing does this too, but I was building a bass patch and tried out the BK Darkglass drive and when I play a note there's this awful overtone for the first 1-ish second of the note that's roughly a minor 9th above the fundamental. As the note sustains it slips back in tune. None of the other drive models do this. Is this normal behavior? I'm on 1.04.
 
Do all notes produce a minor 9th, or do different notes produce different intervals?

It’s possible that you’re getting intermodulation distortion between the played note and 60/120/180 Hz hum. The intermodulation would fall back as the note decays below distortion.
 
On second listen, it sounds more like a minor 2nd than a 9th. It's most prominent on the open D, G and C strings (6 string bass), so I'm wondering if maybe it's an artifact from some fret buzz? Or maybe just the fact that open strings are brighter and richer in overtones is causing some intermodulation distortion? I didn't play any lower notes, but it sounds fine on anything below C2. All the way down to low B doesn't seem to be effected; just higher notes.

Here's a recording of what I'm hearing. C2 chromatically up to G3.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uhwfe2fdii5yebe/darkglass.wav?dl=0
 
I'm not hearing a minor second/ninth but the open D & G sound kind of noisy. Are you sure you were muting the rest of the strings well during those notes? Watch the two lower strings in particular. If your fretting hand was the only thing muting the E while fretting the A, they can both end up free to ring when you move to the open D.

Overall it sounds kind of choked and buzzy too. I'd take a look at general setup things like nut height and neck bow, and try raising saddle height a bit.
 
I'm muting pretty thoroughly (left-hand fingers muting higher strings, picking hand muting lower strings), but I do have the bass set up for fairly low action (I mostly play fingerstyle) and I'm hitting the strings pretty aggressively in the clip. I was just perplexed by the artifacts because none of the other drive block models have any similar audible artifacts like this.
 
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