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I use Garageband for demoing stuff and I just can't get a decent bass sound out it with my PJ Mustang. I'm looking at buying a pre-amp/DI pedal as I'm really happy with the Iridium I bought for my other guitars. However, I can't spend that much this time so I've been thinking about the Ampeg Classic pedal or EHX Battalion nano. I'd consider other options though. Has anyone any experience or advice with these things?

Don't overlook Tech 21. They've got their bass pre/DIs from basic to fancy, and none of them aren't good.

If you really wanna do it budget style, a $20 Behringer DI box into your interface will prolly get you the beef you're looking for. I've got two, they've got transformers in them, and they're a good DI box on the cheap. And they're too simple for them to get screwed up in the factory. That and some freebie amp sim could tide you over.

That's really useful. Are the Behringers really that good?

The tech 21 stuff is great. The last few albums I made we recorded the bass through one of the tech21 DIs as well as a DI out of my Ampeg, and then mics a 410 cab. We ended up using the Tech21 on almost everything. It was probably 90% of the bass sound. We never used the ampeg di, but did end up mixing in just a little bit of the cab tone to give it a bit of depth. I wish I knew the model off of the top of my head, but I think it was a late 90s or early 2000s sansamp.

timiscott wrote: ↑

Sun Nov 22, 2020 4:21 am

That's really useful. Are the Behringers really that good?

They're fine. Nothing special, really, but they do what they're supposed to and they sound good. There's nothing bad about them, let's put it that way.

Tech 21 stuff is great, but I went with this, because it is very cheap and sounded good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUsnr1rypnA
https://www.thomann.de/gb/eden_module_t ... hYQAvD_BwE

I put a mini-review here: https://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/vi ... 4#p1636594

I now have my Mustang PJ bass and it plays very nicely with. that. I much prefer it to my Ampeg Classic (the small stomp box sized one) which was pretty noisy.

Tech 21 is ok.

I would experiment a little more though. One thing I do sometimes is copy the dry DI track and treat the copy differently. Usually for me that means squashing the crap out of it and blending to taste with the uncompressed track.

Sometimes I’ll mute everything else and run just the bass through the “mastering” processing stuff, drop the resulting file back into the session, and use that as my squashed track.

Since you already have an Iridium you could also try splitting your signal pre-Iridium and bringing the second leg of your split straight to your interface and use the direct track to fill in the low end. Ideally your spitter would allow you to flip the phase on one leg in case there is weirdness when you sum the tracks together.

I can't speak to the budget side of things, but purely for tone, I've got a Darkglass Vintage Ultra which sounds absolutely awesome. They aren't cheap, but you can sometimes find deals on them secondhand. Also, they make two other versions, Vintage Deluxe (also with DI) and the Vintage Microtubes (no DI) if you wanted the sound and to add your own DI (like the Behringer).

This is all really useful! At the moment, I'm swinging towards the Ampeg Classic or EHX Battalion Nano pedals... but I'm open to persuasion. Does anyone have any experience with these things?

Tech21 bass driver/DI. Industry standard I don't feel like anything is better. Ampeg and MXR make ones that are OK too but I have just always used tech 21. My bass player has the rack mount but the pedal is good too.

Why not just use the Iridium that you already possess?

I own an Eden World Tour DI, it's a good alternative.

Usually I just run the bass into my Focusrite ISA One, though, and then use the Amplitube Ampeg SVX plug in from there, though.

Is the Amplitude better than the Ampeg Classic, do you think? As for using the Iridium, when I had guitar amps, putting a bass through them never sounded right to me, so I've never tried it with the Iridium. Would that really work?

Maybe. It's optimized for guitar, so you may not like how it sounds, but you might be able to do something with it.

I didn't even like it for guitar, so no, I wouldn't think it would sound very good on bass.