Hey
Yeah im looking for that Rex Brown Pantera style gain/input punch distortion ,I have done now Rex bass tone match. And its sounds amazing ,I need only get that gain stage little bit harder. And im not looking for frfr or real cabinet tone ,only for recording tone Axe straight to computer and recording software. And bass what use is some cheap ,Kramer whit passive pickups. If you have some good advice or preset ,where you have some kind of extra gain stage punch would be nice if you can share that. And listen here is what im looking for ,03:00 he will play 90s metal bass tone. Link for that tone is below.
MXR M80 Bass Distortion + Demo Video - YouTube
Here are a few different things to try (Bass Amp models, SV BASS):
- in the Amp block, engage the BASS CUT feature, and then add back in the missing girth with the BASS tone knob, along with a touch of Depth and Thunk. The BASS CUT switch will help to keep preamp tube distortion from getting too mushy and flubby in the low end, in order to keep the bass tone punchy and defined. Then adjust the Drive parameter to taste. Also play with Presence for more "bite".
- Try cranking up the Master Volume (back down the Level to avoid clipping), and playing with SAG, which will result in a more organic type of compression, as a means to help "glue" the sound together. This may or may not result in anything you feel adds to the tone, and is more of a fine tune "feel" feature.
- Use Input Trim to make the bass "hotter" in the preamp stage, making the preamp distort more easily - if you're having trouble getting distortion out of, for example, the SV BASS (SVT) model type.
- place a Drive block before the amp block. A little can go a long way with some of these drives, which are designed for high gain. If you're using the Rat, for example, you'll need to back it down quite a bit. Again, the idea is to add grit and overdrive in the midrange/upper midrange without making the low end a saturated mess, so pay attention to the TONE parameter, as well as the settings on the HI/LO CUT parameters on page 2. In series, you may want to back the MIX (wet/dry blend) to 50% or less, depending on how much drive you use.
- If you have a good basic tone that you don't want to interrupt by placing the Drive in front of the Amp Block, consider placing the Drive block in a parallel signal chain, and returning it to your main signal chain before OR after the amp block. It will have a different impact on the sound each way, and you may prefer to keep it clear of the amp block's input stage altogether, and return the Drive after the amp, before the Cabinet block if you are using it.
- Running in parallel gives you a little more freedom to play with the balance of the distorted Drive block's balance and tone IMHO. Make sure the mix is up 100% if you are doing it this way.
As an alternative to a Drive block, consider using a second Amp Block with a higher gain amp type to blend with your basic bass tone. A lot of traditional guitar amps can work well this way (again, be careful of the low end mix) in a parallel signal path. HiWatt, Mesa Boogie, Marshalls...they all can be used this way.
I would also recommend using a compressor block before the amp block. My personal choice is the Pedal 2 type, with mix at about 11 o'clock, and the Sustain set very low so that only a few dB of reduction is happening when hitting the bass hard. Attack slow, Release Fast. Some Emphasis (noon) can be good also. You want the comp to do its job of keeping things glued together tonally, but without it being a noticeable effect. YMMV.
Whether you use a drive or an amp block as a secondary source of distortion to your tone, if you don't eventually run this into a Cab Block, you'll need to do a lot of high end EQ to tame frequencies over 3khz. Sometimes I use a Cab block to filter the distorted tone, sometimes I don't but use radical EQ (in the Amp block) instead. To me, using EQ instead of the CAB block can result in a more "in your face" direct tone. If you run into a Cab block, you need to settle on an IR that you really, really like. This choice by itself can be a time consuming chore IMHO if you aren't satisfied with the direction of the sound.
Keep in mind that a lot of the time, what you are hearing from a bass tone is not necessarily the low frequency fundamental note, but the immediate harmonics above it. Thus, you'd be surprised that having reduced frequencies below 60hz can be a good thing in the context of the mix (for the type of music we are discussing). A sound mixer recently complimented me on my emulated bass tone via amp & cabinet modeling. The reason was that I didn't bludgeon him with low end frequencies, which he says is all too common with DI bass signals. Adding bass to a bass guitar signal is a very easy thing to do. He said that the big difference was in the clarity of the mids and top end that allowed the bass tone to stand out in the mix clearly.
