Tech 21 BDDI v2 vs VT Bass DI and VT 500

harmaes

Inspired
Anyone have experience with these pedals? Which one do you prefer / use? In what musical context?

I'm personally looking for more Ampeg amp tones, mainly for recording using pedals in front and IRs.
I've heard different opinions concerning the BDDI v2 and the VT pedal / amp.
 
Well if you would like to have the Ampeg sound,i would check out this pedal :)

I have never tried it..

http://www.ampeg.com/products/pedals/scr_di/

SCR-DI_web.jpg
 
From what I read on TalkBass the Tech 21 pedals are better rated, the drive side of this pedal seems to suck. There's a new Classic Analog Bass pedal coming out from Ampeg that's the cleaner side which could be cool in front of the Axe Fx II with a tube amp model and a good IR. It seems that these pedals do have some cab sim on board.
 
So, Ampeg was a sponsor of my last Emerald City Bass Convention. They had a line up of amps there, as well as their Classic Preamp, Scrambler Overdrive, and Scrambler DI pedals. They also gave 4 of them away to get them into the hands of more players, since the Classic Pre was so new (the ones they gave away were from the first shipment to land in the US). So, I got to play those right next to a Heritage SVT, SVT-7PRO, a PF-500, and a PF-50T.
To my ears, the best way to tackle the Ampeg tone across all of those was running two pedals - the Scrambler Overdrive into the Classic Pre. This was absolutely nailing the SVT and PF-50T tones, easily. It couldn't quite get the 7PRO, but, to me that's not a big deal.
 
To my ears, the best way to tackle the Ampeg tone across all of those was running two pedals - the Scrambler Overdrive into the Classic Pre. This was absolutely nailing the SVT and PF-50T tones, easily. It couldn't quite get the 7PRO, but, to me that's not a big deal.

That's great to hear. I was planning to try out the Classic Analog pedal, delivery is delayed here in the EU which is a shame. Not sure about the Scrambler pedal influence as I have enough dirt to run before the Classic Analog that's more versatile.
 
The Classic is a good pedal. It feels a lot like the old SVP-Pro preamp that was out a long time ago. When mated up with the Scrambler Overdrive, it was pretty awesome setup... certainly a two-pedal setup that would do a ton of gigs very well. I was totally surprised. I wanted to, but didn't have time, to throw my B7K in with those two and see how that sounded as a setup. Add in a compressor and well, I probably wouldn't really need anything else at all.
 
Used to own a SansAmp BDDI. Loved the sounds it made, but hated how noisy it was in the high frequency ranges... lots of hiss. Sold it.

I've found that a lot of mass-produced bass effects (especially digital units such as the ZOOM B3, etc) tend to suffer from really noisy poor-quality electronics... they think they can get away with it just because so many bass players roll down the treble or dial down the horns on their cabs... and so many bass players do that because they think all that electronic noise in the high freqs is "normal" and just needs to be dialed out. One good thing I can say about my FX8 is that it's dead silent when it's supposed to be and doesn't degrade the high frequencies. Now if they'd just fix it so the patches don't suck out all the good low frequencies...
 
I've also come to the conclusion that the bass amp sounds combined with pedals or with a 2nd amp block for dirt sounds a lot better than the Sansamp/Tech21 stuff. I've added 2 pedals from Darkglass and for the moment I have cool bass tones with the Axe Fx II.
 
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