Tech21NYC

On 3/8/2018 at 11:38, BassBod said:

Don’t think so, as long as the bass and treble aren’t boosted.  Thanks for the contribution Tech21 - very interesting to read.  I always used mine in front of SWR’s to warm them up a bit - never thought of using the uneffected output for the amp 😳.  After 20 years I’ve retired my original Bass Driver due to scratchy pots (most of them!) Is it possible to “re-pot” a Sansamp and get it back into service?

If you contact our support department they can hook you up with our UK Distributor for a repair. [email protected]

3 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

That's what I thought was supposed to happen, but every time I engaged the pedal there was an instant change in the tone.. strange.

At the time, I was running it straight into a poweramp.

 

It's possible the pots needed to be adjusted slightly. There is a  slight variance but you should be able to toggle the unit on and off to get it flat. Or just keep the pedal in bypass. We measure it on the scope when we test them. 

22 hours ago, wateroftyne said:

Thanks for contributing.

It might be my failing memory, but I seem to recall engaging the SansAmp with the blend rolled off still introduced a noticeable change in the mids...?

With the Blend off and the tone controls at 12 o'clock the unit is flat. The tone controls react differently when the Blend is off.  What were you running the pedal into?

3 hours ago, Raggy said:

So is there much difference between the Para Driver and the V2 Bass Driver?

Very different pedal. The Para Driver DI is more open ended and can be used with many different instruments whereas the Bass Driver DI is optimized for bass. The Para Driver has its sweepable midrange control before the SansAmp circuit which gives it more Drive potential. It also lacks the Presence control which the Bass Driver has. It depends what you're looking for. The Bass Driver is popular with players that like that tone and the ability to get it fast. Your playing style, instrument (active or passive) and what you run the unit into (bass amp, console, power amp etc) all come into play.

With any sound shaping device it helps to know beforehand what specifically you are trying to accomplish. It seems like many players that complain about the unit just bought it without a clear idea of what they wanted. It wasn't designed to be a distortion box although many use it that way. It's a DI/amp emulator and needs to be approached as such. 

7 hours ago, Wolverinebass said:

@Tech21NYC I have a question. I was hoping that the manual would be out or that a video demo would address this.

Is it possible to turn the unit on straight into mix mode or does it always default to the clean channel when you press the on switch even if you've turned it off in mix mode?

Just curious.

Yes, the mix can be pre-armed so it activates in that mode.

The Bass Driver DI was designed as a tone shaping direct box. The concept was to plug into the DI and send the "parallel" output to your bass amp and use your amp for your stage monitor and tone. The Bass Driver DI's XLR would be sent to the mixer and would be set for the most desirable DI tone. The Bass Driver does have a specific tone with a midrange dip that many find desirable. When running into the front of an amp it usually sounds best if your amp is set flat. If your amp is set with a midrange dip (which is quite common) or you have an active bass with a similar setting, this will be exacerbated using the Bass Driver DI. It really comes down to whether or not you use the pedal as an always on effect or like to turn it on and off. Usually backing down the Blend or reducing the Bass and Treble (plus increasing the midrange for the V2 pedal) will take care of this. If you require more midrange content you might consider our Para Driver DI, VT Bass DI or Q\Strip (no amp emulation though) products.

There seems to be a misconception about tube emulation and tube amps in general. I guess if you're a younger player and have not had much first hand experience with tube amps it's easy to assume that tubes=distortion which is not true. Natural tube output stage distortion is not so much an effect but a byproduct of pushing an analog circuit beyond its design limits. Tube amps as well as our tube emulation can be set clean. Tube amps were designed to run clean.

Vintage tube amps had no "blend" control. We provide one because in a studio setting it was quite common to mic a tube amp and also run a DI of the bass direct to the console to get a more complex and refined tone. A big part of the problem when recording bass even in a large professional recording environment is that bass frequencies are very hard to control and will easily bleed into other microphones if say tracking other instruments. This tends to be why most studio and live sound techs prefer using a DI versus a mic with bass amps.

Because our products emulate vintage tube amps they are able to achieve their overdrive and distortion characteristics irrespective of their volume levels unlike a vintage Ampeg SVT or Marshall. Because of this, it is advisable to be judicious with the Drive settings as in a live context you will play harder when competing with guitars and drums which will result in more overdrive than intended. 

There is protection circuitry in the power amp section to prevent damage to the speaker.

20 hours ago, JohnDaBass said:

Oh, I see what you mean. The Bite switch when engaged is the stock VT Bass tone. It's a pre shape filter that combines a treble boost and low cut. Similar to the bright cap on a guitar amp but for bass it's desirable to trim out a little of the sub-low end when running distortion. The shift on the Character control gives you more tonal range than the standard control. 

No HPF filter.

17 hours ago, JohnDaBass said:

@Tech21NYC

Does the preamp have HPF built-in? If so what is the frequency?

The combo seems to be a very nice , convenient solution to many bassist who maybe going down the FRFR route but want more bass guitar focused small unit.

No HPF filter.

22 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

@Tech21NYC You have a lot of love over this side of the pond.  We'd love to know what's going in in your R&D rather than the odd comment!

Sorry, I just don't have any more information at present. The amp was just released. I do know we have some here that will be shipping in the US very soon but don't have anymore information beyond that. I'd suggest checking out our Facebook page. Usually there is up to date information there.

For now, we just have the B112-VT cab to pair with it. There is discussion for a matching cab but that has not been finalized, The amp will be available in the UK but I don't have an exact release date as of yet, 

The concept behind our SansAmp DI's was that you would plug your bass into the DI and send the parallel output to your amp and use that as your stage monitor and send the XLR output to the PA. Pretty much the same way you would use any DI. The difference being that now you have a DI with amp emulation and tonal capabilities whereas most DI's just sound like your guitars pickups. 

The 1/4" output allows you to use the pedal into your amp for additional tone shaping etc. The speaker emulation is a fairly mild curve and is designed to work through a traditional bass amp speaker as well as direct. No matter how you slice it, running the same signal to radically different sources like a bass amp with it's own preamp and a flat response PA will always result in a compromise. Removing the speaker sim on the amp input would make the pedal much brighter in which case you would have to compensate by either changing the EQ on your amp or on the pedal. Changing the EQ on the pedal would then change the sound at the PA. This is why we recommend setting the EQ on your bass amp fairly flat when running the pedal in front.

We have many users that run the pedal into their amp as well as the PA and have success. For most situations your sound presented to the audience will be a mix of your stage sound and the PA. 

The wattage of the VT Bass 200 is about 150 watts with its internal speaker. With an 8 ohm extension speaker it's 200 watts. 

The dUg  DP-3X will be a 9 volt pedal. I don't think a manual  has been written for it yet as the pedal is just being introduced. 

Quote

Valve amp       power is directly proportional to speaker Impedance 
      therefore   power increases as the speaker Impedance rises.
Solid-state     power is inversely proportional to speaker Impedance 
      therefore  power decreases as the speaker Impedance rises.

It's best to stick with the manufacturers suggested rating. Running a bit higher (8 vs 4 Ohms) you will lose some output but there will be no tonal change.The only time I've ever blown a power amp was running at 2 ohms and I wasn't running it hard.  

8 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

Glasses needed, maybe ? 

I'm comparing to other forums and I already use glasses. 

11 minutes ago, Bridgehouse said:

On my mobile, the quoted text looks smaller, but with a light blue background highlight...

I'm on a computer. 

Is it just me, but I find this new site very difficult to read. I've increased size to 110% and compared with TalkBass and some other forums and the text is on the faint side. Not everyone is a millennial with 20 something eyes. This is text from another forum "Any opinions, thoughts, or first hand experiences would be welcome!"

One thing to keep in mind with the VT Bass or any of our SansAmp products. They are amp emulators and can obtain output type tube/valve distortion "independent" of volume. If you're running the VT with a lot of distortion to get the equivalent sound out of a vintage SVT and 810's you would be extremely loud and would automatically adjust your playing to the volume level. If you took the same SVT stack and put it in isolation and could only hear it through headphones or studio monitors the actual amp would seem overly compressed.

To get the best results with our products we recommend starting with a cleaner sound at gig level and judiciously add Drive. If you use the same amount of Drive level that you use at home it will probably be too much and overly saturated at gig level when competing with drums and guitar amps.

What the OP is talking about does exist but more for the guitar amp market not for bass amps. Weber makes a device to change and match impedances but it is only rated for 100 watts. You could hook up a dummy load that that would be able to absorb the power of an amp but resistance based loads don't represent the reactive load of a speaker so the sound can be a bit flat. Most guitar attenuators on the market are designed for 100 watt guitar amps not 300 watt bass amps. We have load resistors for test purposes here and they handle about 400 watts.

Tube or valve amps have output transformers which is why they will deliver the same amount of power into different impedance loads. SS amps by contrast don't have output transformers so their wattage will change when hooked up to 2,4 or 8 ohm loads.

I wasn't quite sure what the OP was looking to accomplish.

Unfortunately I don't have the figures handy and my engineer would probably have to measure the unit. What I did find out is that the Rumble filter isn't really suitable for bass guitar as it was designed to reduce the body resonance of an acoustic guitar when using the SansAmp circuit. Probably around 100 Hz. The "Air" filter raises the cutoff frequency of the speaker sim in the SansAmp circuit to allow more high end for an acoustic instrument. If you want a true HP/LP filter you are better off with our Q\Strip.

It's best to contact customer support for problems of this nature. Sometimes the actuator spring can get misaligned. They can best tell you how to fix it. [email="[email protected]"][email protected][/email]

Cab sims are in reality "microphone" sims. They are designed to emulate the sound of a mic'd cab through various microphones. No cab sim will transform a smaller cab into a larger enclosure. You can maybe get somewhat in the ballpark with a cab sim or just using EQ but you can't recreate the physics of moving air molecules.

There is no easy answer. Usually with a passive ABY it should work. If the ABY is buffered it probably won't. I've used an old Whirlwind ABY like this and it works fine with pedals. With rack mount units not so much. It seems there is some bleed through. You might be better off with a small passive mixer.

[quote name='NancyJohnson' timestamp='1499794584' post='3333683']
People of Tech21NYC, could you verify whether the ABY box method would work?
[/quote]

If by ABY box you mean running it in reverse, sending the outputs of the preamp to the inputs of the ABY and using the i/o ports as the output it can work. It will depend on the ABY box though.

[quote name='Jack' timestamp='1499795254' post='3333691']
Whilst I can't defend Wolverine's stupid comment, it does seem as though 100% of the bassists on here have said they would have massively preferred a switch to an internal jumper. I know I would.

You're right, you designed it for Geddy and not for us, but still, we're the ones who'll be buying it. Or not.
[/quote]

For those that wish to reconfigure the product they can contact our support staff for instructions. [email="[email protected]"][email protected][/email]
[quote name='Wolverinebass' timestamp='1499796865' post='3333704']
Well, having a bad day, so a bit more tetchy than normal. Apologies.

Fair enough it's designed for Geddy. I think it sounds great. However, not everyone uses 2 cabs do they? Some people might still want that sound, but use a mono, single cab system.

I just don't get why you'd leave it so you have to take it apart to change this when I assume it's not a big deal to put a button on the front or back to change the setting. Say for a gig in mono, but recording in stereo? I just prefer flexibility.

Maybe that reads as more of a legitimate concern than what I posted.
[/quote]

I actually don't offend easily. No need to apologize.

In the end it wouldn't be a GED-2112 preamp had we changed the existing format.

[quote name='Wolverinebass' timestamp='1499759866' post='3333331']
That's pathetic. Internal jumpers? A switch, Tech21 you total idiots! Put a switch on the back! Did that really save so much r&d time when that got tossed off?...
[/quote]

Kind of an overreaction and rude response. Anonymity seems to bring out the worst in people...
The GED-2112 was designed to Geddy's specifications. It's set up for the way he uses it. There are workarounds through...

The dUg can be ordered for use with different voltages. If you have a US version a qualified tech can set it up for use in a different country.