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Blackglass B7K: based on Darkglass Electronics Microtubes B7K
Model of a Scandanavian analog bass preamp, famous for its overdrive, transparency and versatility. It's very popular among bass players, covering the spectrum from crystal clear powerful tones to modern crushing bass distortion.
Darkglass Electronics:
“The Microtubes B7K takes the powerful dynamic saturation circuit of the B3K and adds a four-band equalizer and a balanced line driver for even greater versatility. Designed for both studio and live use, it will take your direct sound to a whole new level".
The B7K "Ultra" (not modeled) added additional EQ controls.
User manual
Review on Bass-Pedals.com
Review in Gitarre & Bass (German)
Sometimes begging works! The B7K model was added by Fractal Audio after many forum members kept asking for it. The model isn’t yet mentioned in the current Owner’s Manual.
The real B7K can be used standalone for recording or direct-to-mixer. Or as an overdrive pedal into a bass amp. Or with a separate power amp and cabinet.
Likewise, Fractal Audio’s model can be used with a virtual amp and cab model, or without.
The original pedal has a lot of controls:
- Blend: mixes the clean signal with the overdriven signal (model: Mix)
- Level: volume of overdriven signal (model: Level)
- Drive: amount of gain (model: Drive)
- Attack: amount of treble to saturate (model: Tone)
- Boost
- Flat *
- Cut
- Grunt: amount of bass to saturate (model: Low Cut)
- Fat
- Thin *
- Raw
- Low (100 Hz), Low Mids (1 kHz), Hi Mids (2.8 kHz), Treble (5 kHz) (model: EQ controls)
”The model was obtained with the Attack and Grunt switches in the middle positions. The Grunt switch changes the low-cut frequency therefore the Low Cut control can be used to replicate this switch. The Attack switch controls a shelving filter on the input and can be replicated using the Tone control".
In other words, the B7K model was modeled with Grunt set to “Thin”, so you probably want to adjust the Low Cut parameter.
The Drive block allows us to adjust far more things than the modeled unit: Bias, Slew, Mix, High Cut and other parameters are available to us. But that's beyond the scope of this thread. Those parameters are discussed in the manual and wiki.
About CPU:
- Fractal Audio's Drive models take up varying amounts of CPU. The B7K requires a moderate amount (9-10%).
- When a Drive block is engaged, CPU percentage will rise during playing, because CPU usage is "amplitude dependent".
Link to the list of published threads
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